Maybe the End of the American Century Starts Here

Failure of engagement to deliver ideal outcomes do not mean that deterrence will be more successful, or even more desirable.  

I try to eschew dramatic, click-baiting headlines, but I think current developments in Asia are a big deal.  

President Obama is visiting Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea.

He’s not visiting the People’s Republic of China.  He never planned to, because this trip is meant as an exercise in pivot-love, the bromance of Asian democracies + the United States dedicated to…

…well, let’s cut to the chase.

Dedicated to the containment of the People’s Republic of China.

The pivot to Asia, in my humble opinion, started out as a rather cynical exercise by the United States in encouraging pushback against the PRC by its aggrieved and alarmed neighbors, so that the US could step up, flourish its world’s best military and soft power muscle, and thereby claim a prime position in the evolving East Asian economic and security order.

I’m not saying the PRC hasn’t been acting like a dick in its dealings its neighbors.  What I’m saying is the best way to deal with that was not by slapping up a confrontational security alliance by hyping local dustups as a challenge to global economic and security well-being.

The pivot, in other words, has foundations built on sand.  It uses the rhetoric of existential threat to create expectations of unity and determination that simply aren’t there.  The pivot actually relies completely on the idea that the United States, because of its military superiority, can deter the PRC before the Asian democracies really have to decide that they want to participate in a war of annihilation with the PRC for the sake of the Senkakus, Scarborough Shoal, Second Thomas Shoal, and Paracels, hereinafter The Worthless Islands Nobody Wants to Die For or TWINWTDF.

Personally, I think the United States would have advanced the interests of its allies, regional stability, and its relations with the PRC by measured engagement on individual issues, but that didn't happen.  Instead, we got the pivot which, in a pattern familiar to grandiose American global and regional escapades, will probably provide full employment over decades for the diplomats, soldiers, and spooks tasked with trying to manage its fundamental and intractable problems while royally screwing up the locality it is ostensibly rescuing/protecting/assisting with its ostentatious intransigence.

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

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.

If pressed, the PRC will seek to demonstrate the weakness of the pivot and the hollowness of the US military-based deterrent by pounding away at its antagonists at their most vulnerable points, specifically their economic links to the PRC and their assets inside the PRC (and, perhaps, letting its courts seize a Japanese ore ship to satisfy a 77-year old legal claim).  

Unfortunate developments in the Ukraine, I think, have a lot to do with the recent evolution of strategic jostling.

The PRC, while politely appalled by the Russian annexation of Crimea, also noted that the United States and EU quietly parted ways on the need to confront Russia even with sanctions, let alone militarily, and apparently essayed some mischief of its own, interfering with the Philippines' resupply of its detachment of marines on the Ayungin Shoal.

The United States, bearing in mind the rather dismal picture of Western resolve exhibited on the matter of Ukraine and also needing to set the table for President Obama's Asian trip, decided it needed to double down on unity with its pivot partners, coming down more explicitly and categorically on the side of the Philippines and Japan on their island issues (for details see my Asia Times Online article attached below).

Also, I believe, the absolute identification of the US with the interests of the shaky and compromised Ukraine regime, its refusal to engage with Russia on the crisis that the US-supported coup had created, and its adventurism in trying to destabilize Russia by attacking its oligarchs with sanctions served further notice, if any was needed, that in times of genuine crisis when the boot might be put to a geopolitical adversary, US professions of honest brokerdom and responsible leadership in dealing with inconvenient “strategic competitors” were meaningless.

As a fitting symbol of the US “all in” determination to support the Kiev regime and whitewash its deep and disturbing flaws, I give readers this immortal image of Joe Biden defiantly giving the grip and grin with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of Ukraine’s “ultranationalist” Svoboda party for the cameras of the world press.

(Image from Reuters pool coverage)

Add to that the US decision that enabling Japanese remilitarization, symbolized by collective self defense, is an indispensable component of the pivot.  The US looks to be too deep in Japan’s embrace to restrain Japan’s undeniable independent inclinations in regional policy (undeniable, that is if one looks closely at Japan’s discrete adventurism in the Philippines, with North Korea, and the DPP opposition in Taiwan) and, if it extracts itself to try to play the “honest broker” its efforts will be equivocal and less than effective.

G2—a mutually supportive and productive engagement between the PRC and the US—never lived, even though Hillary Clinton took pains to declare it dead.  Now, the “honest broker” ship has sailed, for good, I think, courtesy of the deepened US commitment to the pivot.

The PRC’s increased willingness to defy the pivot and chip away at US deterrent credibility by attacking the interests of its allies--and its determination to test its ability to endure the real diplomatic, economic, and political costs of festering hostility with its neighbors against the resolve of the region and disapproval of the United States--is, I believe, related to the fact that the pivot and Japanese security activism has exacerbated a lot of the PRC’s festering disputes with its neighbors.

The PRC can expect a series of crises related to the pivot and emboldened neighbors in the upcoming years, including a possible loss of the Philippine arbitration over the nine-dash line, continued friction with Japan (which Japan will welcome if not incite in order to keep PRC firmly in the ranks of Asia’s scary bad guy), and also on the radar, the possibility that the viscerally anti-PRC DPP will win the presidential elections in 2016 and, if they lose, subject Taiwan to a Maidan-style political crisis.

To this uninviting mix add the prospect of eight years of Hillary Clinton, a confirmed and enthusiastic panda-slugger and pivot proponent, in the White House, and the growing credibility of the PRC-excluding Trans Pacific Partnership, prospects for favorable developments for the PRC in its East Asian dealings are rather slim.

So it looks to me like the PRC is no longer solely relying on the "long game"--the idea that it could dodge confrontation with the United States and "slice the salami" in the South China Sea until its demographic, military, and economic sway over East Asia would appear insurmountable and the region and US would quietly reconcile themselves to the idea that the PRC should be calling most of the shots.

Instead, it looks like the PRC has decided that, rather than waiting for the crises to erupt and have to engage in risky adventures in the South China Sea or the Senkakus or, God forbid, actually have to do something about its intransigent stance on Taiwan de jure independence, it will pre-emptively go on the offensive and chip away at the foundations of the pivot and the credibility of the US deterrent by fomenting selected confrontations on its own, more favorable terms.

I’m not expecting open confrontation with the US, by the way—it will be the pre-eminent military force in Asia for the foreseeable future—and superficial comity will prevail.  But I do not expect it to be a particular fun time to be a US ally.  The cost of membership in the pivot, in other words, will be continued PRC pressure and harassment and discrete economic warfare.

Asian countries that hedge their bets and eschew active membership in the pivot, on the other hand, might do rather well in their dealings with the PRC.

And, of course, if the US decides to really test the PRC's assumption that it can handle the risks and costs of calculated escalation and outlast the nations of the pivot, we are in for interesting times, indeed.  After all, the whole pivot fracas grew out of the US desire to escalate the PRC's local bilateral territorial disputes into a regional security issue a.k.a. "the threat to freedom of navigation" in order to redefine the PRC's "salami slicing" as a casus belli involving the United States.

Collateral damage of this PRC strategy may involve abandoning the World War II victor’s dispensation, which granted the United States the central role in Asian security and was promoted by the PRC when it still appeared that the US might constrain Japan as well as the PRC.  Shorn of its unique moral and security role among the Asian nations (with their burgeoning economies and defense budgets), the US may find itself increasingly perceived as an economic competitor and source of security instability, rather than the font of prosperity and security it imagines itself.

That’s why I’m saying President Obama’s trip to Asia might serve as the marker for the end of the “American Century” and the beginning of the “Pacific Century”.

In passing, I guess I should address President Obama’s explicit statement that the Senkakus were covered by the US-Japan Security Treaty.

Nothing particularly new here; Secretary of State Clinton affirmed coverage in 2010 and I think it’s been reaffirmed incessantly since then.

Now, if President Obama had declared that the US regarded the Senkakus as Japanese sovereign territories (he didn’t; he carefully described them as territories administered by Japan), the PRC would have justifiably gone apeshit.

I am getting a little tired of repeating this point, but Nixon returned the Senkakus to Japanese administrative control with the understanding that Japan would negotiate their sovereignty with “China”, especially Taiwan which, by any interpretation is the most plausible candidate.  By nationalizing three of the islands in 2012, the Japanese government basically spat on that deal and provided a certain degree of encouragement to PRC hopes that the US might act as a real “honest broker” over the islands.  Not to be, in my opinion.

If one wants to explore the real mystery of the Senkakus, their role in Japanese security adventurism, and what the PRC expects of the tenor and integrity of US-PRC relations in a Hillary Clinton presidency, I invite readers to reflect on this passage from the Japan Times in August 2010 (link no longer available; if anyone can find it behind the paywall in the archive, please let me know):

The Obama administration has decided not to state explicitly that the Senkaku Islands, which are under Japan's control but claimed by China, are subject to the Japan-US security treaty, in a shift from the position of George W Bush, sources said Monday.

The administration of Barack Obama has already notified Japan of the change in policy, but Tokyo may have to take counter-measures in light of China's increasing activities in the East China Sea, according to the sources. 

In other words, the Obama administration was ready to sidle closer to the PRC’s side on the Senkaku Islands.  But a few weeks later, PRC relations blew up with the detention of the Chinese fishing boat off the Senkakus, the rare earth “crisis”, and Hillary Clinton’s affirmation that the Senkakus were, surprise, covered by the treaty.  I think history will judge that the whole episode was a “counter-measure”, a provocation if you will, by Clinton and Seiji Maehara (Maehara insisted over the objections of the cabinet that the Chinese captain be tried in Japanese court, guaranteeing an international incident).

With this lengthy preamble, here is my Asia Times Online article from April 22, 2014.  It can be reposted if China Matters is credited and a link provided.

April 22, 2014

Obama runs China's pivot gauntlet
By Peter Lee

In recent days, the People's Republic of China has dropped several public relations clangers: it barred Japan from a fleet review in Qingdao and, after the US pulled its ship in solidarity with Japan, cancelled the whole review; it snubbed Japan's Marine Self Defense Force delegation by refusing a bilateral meeting; and a Shanghai court ordered the seizure of a Mitsui OSK Line vessel - a gigantic ore carrier longer than three football fields - as compensation for a 1937 legal case.

This string of events occasioned a certain amount of triumphalist hooting that China's goonish behavior was a series of own goals and soft-power defeats for the PRC that would contribute to the preferred US dynamic of overbearing PRC behavior strengthening a defensive alignment of Asia democracies led by, of course, the US of A.

This new Asian security regime is due to be celebrated as the successful implementation of the "pivot to Asia" during President Barack Obama's visit to the region. (Obama leaves the US on Tuesday for a week-long tour, taking in Malaysia the Philippines, Japan and South Korea.)

The question that should be asked is whether the PRC leadership has looked at events in Asia and developments worldwide and decided to do something other than fight on the West's preferred ground of "soft power".

It should be pointed out that whenever the PRC wants to get serious about its Japan-related gripes, it does not engage in what I would characterize as Senkaku kabuki, the ritualized display of sovereignty-asserting chicken-of-the-sea encounters between PRC and Japanese maritime patrol vessels and aircraft.

Instead, it kicks off hostilities on its home ground, where the PRC holds the legal and diplomatic advantage and can draw on the assiduously cultivated anti-Japan hostility of a significant swath of its citizenry.

Therefore, the fact that the PRC has chosen to flex its anti-Japanese muscles in Qingdao and Shanghai, pivot be damned, should be a matter of interest to the US and the Asian democracies.

As to the context in which the PRC is seemingly abandoning its hope of modifying its behavior to win the approval of its perennially disapproving liberal democratic audience, consider recent developments.

While the US was preoccupied with developments in Ukraine, the PRC decided to interfere with the Philippines' resupply of nine marines stationed on the Sierra Madre, a hulk that had been beached on the Second Thomas Shoal/Ayungin Shoal/Ren'ai Shoal in the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea in 1999 in order to strengthen the Philippines' claim to the atoll.

From the UN Law of the Sea standpoint, the Sierra Madre is a man-made structure that is irrelevant to claims of sovereignty, which might explain why the PRC decided it was OK to mess with it. However, blocking the resupply could be construed as a violation of the standstill agreement negotiated in 2002 between the PRC and ASEAN.

The Philippine government failed, then succeeded in resupplying the Sierra Madre by air. Then, on March 29, a civilian Philippine vessel made it past two Chinese coast guard cutters and to the Sierra Madre.

This was presented as one of those heart-warming David versus Goliath stories, with the plucky Philippine vessel successfully eluding the hulking PRC cutters to bring succor to the stranded marines.

The truth is perhaps a little more complicated.

The PRC cutters first intercepted the Philippine vessel an hour before it reached the shallow water of the atoll but was unable to block the vessel. This might have less to do with expert seamanship than with the fact that the ship was chock-a-block with reporters - 12 journos and photographers from seven media organizations, including AP and Reuters. An AFP reporter and photographer were on board a Philippine military aircraft overflying the action.

Perhaps the PRC's unwillingness to play the role of the Ugly Chinese in front of an international prestige media audience had something to do with its forbearance. If the journos felt any ethical qualms about serving as human shields for this display of Philippine bravado, their reporting does not record it.

But there's more.

A US surveillance aircraft - and a PRC "balance beam" early warning turboprop - were also overhead, implying that the US and PRC had prior knowledge of the resupply effort.

So, the resupply mission now looks like a calculated show of US and Philippine resolve against PRC "salami slicing" - the incremental strengthening of China's geostrategic position in its adjoining oceans - and opportunistic testing of US determination subsequent to an embarrassing display of the limits of US power in the matter of the annexation of Crimea to Russia.

But yes, there's more.

Shortly after the resupply incident, two Japanese destroyers made a port call to Manila, something that was reported only by the PRC and Philippine press - not the English-language Japanese press, or the US press, as far as I can tell, which I consider to be a rather telling omission since journos had been packed to the gunwales on the Philippine resupply ship just a few days before.

And then an interesting op-ed appeared on the Huffington Post, by T Dean Reed, writer of the Reed Report, rang the soft power changes, and passed along an interesting tid-bit:

[The PRC] has already shown signs of fear of public opinion branding it as a rogue nation. The first sign came when China appeared to blink and made last-minute offers if the Philippines wouldn't file its case [in The Hague where a five-judge tribunal will determine if China has violated international law by its continuing efforts to take over the South China Sea]. The offers were believed to include withdrawal from contested islands and reefs and a huge trade-and-aid package to the Philippines, described as leading to a new golden age of cooperation between the two countries.

Now China denies any such offer - "sheer fabrication" - because no formal offer was made, only back-channel efforts that were rejected by the Philippines. China has resumed its litany of bluster and threats, warning the Philippines of untold consequences. The next sign came when China displayed anger that the Philippines told the world how its supply ship successfully evaded Chinese naval forces by entering shallow waters at Second Thomas Shoal to feed and rotate troops stationed there. Journalists were aboard, and the story immediately received worldwide acclaim. [1]

What is interesting is that Mr Reed is a registered lobbyist, not for the Philippines, but for the Japanese Embassy in Washington, implying that the Philippines was discussing its PRC policy - and perhaps discretely communicating the price tag for a truly satisfying Philippines-Japanese alliance - with its Japanese interlocutors. [2]

And then the Japanese government publicly stated its support of the Philippines in its island disputes with the PRC.

And the Philippines proposed that all of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, including "unqualified" members, be admitted immediately to the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership trade regime, thereby gutting its usefulness as a "high standards" trade pact, but very much furthering the interests of Japan, which craves a central role in a China-excluding trade bloc, the bigger the better, in order to give the Japanese economy, Abenomics, Japan, and Abe a much-needed geopolitical leg up. [3]

So one has a picture of the Philippines and Japan coordinating a series of moves to strengthen their bilateral alliance and accentuate their polarization with the PRC, with behind-the-scenes acceptance by the US.

The PRC has also not done itself any favors with its hectoring of Malaysia over its faltering management of the MH370 passenger aeroplane disappearance; and Indonesia recently went public with its dissatisfaction with the anachronistic nine-dash line that the PRC uses to stake its geopolitical claims in the South China Sea.

Add to that the KMT's debacle in Taiwan, where a combination of the DPP opposition and student protesters has successfully stalled the approval of a services trade pact between the mainland and Taiwan, further wounded Ma Ying-jeou's crippled presidency, and raised the unwelcome (for the PRC) prospect that an emboldened and energized Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will take the presidency in 2016 and steer Taiwan further out of the PRC's orbit.

In fact, the DPP, which has a strong bent toward Japan's ultranationalist camp, might even renounce Taiwan's claims to the Senkakus in favor of Japan. And of course, there's always the de jure independence boogeyman.

And there's more.

One of the under-reported stories is the steady stream of high-level contacts between North Korea and Japan, ostensibly on the limited bilateral issue of the abductees. One can also speculate that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is happy to demonstrate that his negotiations with North Korea are more effective than the PRC-led negotiation process with that country - the one meaningful area of US-PRC diplomatic engagement outside of the Iran issue - and, indeed, he is taking advantage of the purge of the pro-PRC faction in North Korea to position Japan as a frontrunner in economic cooperation with the isolated nation.

Add to this catalogue of Asian problems the possibility that the PRC will be declared the loser in the Philippine case in the Hague over the nine-dash line and you have makings of a pretty fraught decade or two for the PRC in East Asia.

The success of the pivot dynamic has also been marked by the concurrent erosion of US credibility as "the honest broker" - ie the grown-up liberal democratic superpower that deters China and also restrains Japan.

The US had worked to sustain its honest-broker credibility by quietly conciliatory sidebars to its vociferous criticism of the PRC on the issue of air-defense zones, and its coordinated pushback on Prime Minister Abe's visit to the Yasukuni shrine for war dead. (Abe, whose visit to the shrine in December was the first by a sitting prime minister since 2006, was not among 150 lawmakers who visited the shrine on Monday, but he sent a traditional offering.)

Recently, an observer optimistically opined to Reuters that there was still room for a cooperative relationship between the PRC and the US, especially if President Obama declined to publicly throw red meat to his allies on the islands issues during his visit:

"They [Chinese officials] are trying to figure out whether it's the lower-level [American] people coming out and making these comments so the boss doesn't have to, or whether it's moving to a crescendo," said Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA and now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"I think there is a concern that this debate could be swayed substantially if Obama were to make very forthright comments on this trip," he said, "and that could tip the balance internally and make it more difficult for Xi to emphasize the Sino-US relationship as paramount." [4]

The PRC had also attempted to find some geopolitical (and anti-Japanese) common ground with the United States concerning Japan's undeniable (but frequently denied) capabilities as a threshold nuclear weapon power, complete with a large store of fissionable material, missiles, and scientific expertise sufficient to cobble together a nuclear deterrent.

After all, President Obama owes his Nobel Peace Prize to his anticipated and as yet largely unrealized achievements in nuclear non-proliferation, so it may have been hoped that some NPT hay could have been made over suspicions concerning Japan's actual atom-bomb related capabilities.

But no dice. Japan agreed recently to return several hundred kilograms of weapons grade plutonium it had received from the US (while waving aside the issue of Japan's nominally fuel grade but weapon-worthy in-country stash of nine tons of plutonium and its plans to produce more), occasioning hosannahs from the US.

Per the New York Times in late March:

The announcement is the biggest single success in President Obama's five-year-long push to secure the world's most dangerous materials, and will come as world leaders gather here on Monday for a nuclear security summit meeting. [5]

Events in Ukraine have clearly colored US thinking, pushing the US out of the "honest broker" win-win zone, and will probably elicit something of a sea-change in Chinese attitudes toward the US role in Asia.

Pushed by the need to assert the strength of its deterrent against China during the Ukraine crisis and the supremacy of the pivot during President Obama's upcoming visit, the United States has lurched over to the Japanese side of the teeter-totter.

National Security Council director Evan Medeiros' recent interview with Asahi to tee up President Obama's trip strongly indicates that, post Crimea, the Obama administration now regards forestalling any PRC moves against the Senkakus as a matter of vital geopolitical necessity and will back Japan to the hilt in order to sustain the credibility of the US deterrent capability.

Q: Finally, the impact of the Ukraine situation on the Asia-Pacific region. You pointed out in the recent speech that China's action regarding the Ukraine situation produced "uncertainty about how China defines its interests and how it pursues them." Can you elaborate on that?

A: Well, very specifically, what I mean is China regularly, publicly, says that territorial integrity and sovereignty are of the utmost importance, but yet, in the face of a violation of them by Russia through its actions in Ukraine, China has remained agnostic, and has provided essentially de facto support to Russia. For example, it has abstained in UN Security Council and UN General Assembly votes.

So, the question is, "Does China feel that there are some conditions that are actually attached to its support for territorial integrity and sovereignty?" It is raising questions all over the world about China's intentions. [6]

Maintaining US deterrent credibility means obsessive attention to the Senkakus, closer integration of the US-Japanese alliance, and a wholehearted embrace of the problematic and polarizing "collective self defense" arrangement.

Concerning the unfortunate fetishization of the worthless Senkaku islands, Kyodo News Agency headlined comments by a US general on Okinawa: "If China grabs Senkakus, US military would snatch them back".

Lieutenant General John Wissler, who heads up 18,000 Marines based in Okinawa, was actually glossing a statement made by Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of the US Pacific Command, before a senate committee to the effect that the US did not have the amphibious assets in the region to retake the Senkakus.

Locklear's statement, if useful from a budget-enhancement perspective, was not the message that the US wished to send at this particular time, with the Russian flag flying over Crimea. So Wissler made the rather logical observation that US air assets could destroy anything and everything on the island, rendering moot the need to consider an amphibious assault on the Senkakus (downplaying the amphibious assault angle also allowed General Wissler the welcome opportunity to pour cold water on the Army's desire to muscle into the Marines' pivot action by cluttering up Navy ships with its attack helicopters). [7]

The US military's stated eagerness to mix it up in the Senkakus on behalf of Japan and deter the awkwardness of another Crimea grab also adds an unwelcome dimension to "collective self defense", or CSD, for the PRC.

To American military strategists, CSD, together with jamming US military bases down the throats of resistant Okinawans, is apparently the holy grail of pivot planning. It is publicly justified on the rather dubious ground that otherwise Japan could not perform the vital service of shooting down North Korean missiles headed for the United States.

Considering the still rather sorry status of North Korean ICBMs and the rather significant capabilities of the US Navy in the vicinity (which Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has decided to augment with two additional missile-whacking Aegis destroyers arriving in 2017), this threat by itself does not seem to justify the revision of Japan's so-called "pacifist" constitution.

In the eyes of US military planners, it is more likely that CSD would permit Japanese vessels and aircraft to engage in joint operations in a nominal support function to US forces but blast away at anything Chinese or North Korean once things got hot. This crablike segue into an offensive military capability is, understandably, viewed with less than complete enthusiasm by the Japanese public; a recent Asahi poll put opposition at 68%, and support for revising the CSD ban through "interpretation", ie sleight of hand by the Abe cabinet, clocking in at 12%. [8]

I suppose US military diplomacy can draw encouragement from the fact that this level of opposition is about the same as measured on Okinawa to the relocation of the Futenma Air Base, a challenge that the Abe government has met with a relatively successful campaign of bullying and unilateral executive action.

From a US perspective, conditions for President Obama's pivot promotion trip to Asia might appear quite satisfactory. Through a combination of local anxiety, self-interest, and opportunism, PRC assertiveness, and the occasional provocation, the political and economic foundation for a China-containment regime led by the US and keystoned by Japan has been laid.

And with the prospect of a viscerally hostile DPP administration in Taipei in 2016 ready to outdo the Philippines in anti-PRC effrontery and pro-Japanese outreach, the pre-conditions for further rounds of pivot-enhancing crises seem to be at hand.

The question is, what is the PRC going to do about this?

Perhaps the PRC is drawing the conclusion that the tipping point may have been reached, there is no useful daylight to wedge between Japan and the United States, and it is useless and perhaps even dangerous to play along, especially since the PRC can see eight years of Hillary Clinton and her even more aggressive anti-PRC strategy in the offing.

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.

During Defense Secretary Hagel's recent visit to China, his PRC counterpart, Chang Wanquan, drew the line: "The China-US relationship is neither comparable to US-Russia ties in the Cold War, nor a relationship between container and contained. China's development can't be contained by anyone." [9]

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.

The PRC will draw some succor from Russia, since the heavy-handed US policy in Ukraine is driving President Vladimir Putin into China's arms. (Russia's ostentatious increase in air patrols over the Kurile Islands were, perhaps, concrete displays of Russia's eagerness to play ball with the PRC and side against Japan).

A revealing indicator will be if the PRC abandons the World War II "victor's justice" line that it attempted to establish as the basis for the US presence in Asia and some kind of US-PRC condominium. This movement achieved a mini-boomlet with Prime Minister Abe's provocative December visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, sub voce US uneasiness over the essentially anti-US character of right-wing Japanese nationalism, and the PRC's rather clumsy invocations of the Potsdam Declaration (in which the US and Chiang Kai-shek's China jointly called for the unconditional surrender of Japan) as the basis for the peaceful Asian order.

But that dog doesn't hunt anymore, thanks to Prime Minister Abe's support for US initiatives such as Futenma relocation, collective self-defense, and the TPP trade pact. To further mix metaphors, with the tightening US-Japan alliance, it looks like the US "honest broker" ship has sailed for good as far as the PRC is concerned.

If the PRC abandons its celebration of the US "greatest generation" World War II narrative, it will, somewhat ironically, contribute to the erosion of some of America's vaunted soft power. As memories of World War II fade (or, to be more accurate, less flattering narratives of the current significance of that increasingly remote conflict gain traction), the US, instead of exercising its historical and moral prerogative to Asian leadership by sashaying into the region and telling the local powers how they should behave, will simply be another outside power trying to shoulder into the "Pacific Century" and belly up to the economic trough as its rivals and partners grow in military and economic strength and the relative US advantage dwindles.

The PRC, on the other hand, will be determined to demonstrate that it is the central power in East Asia, with existential interests and the credible capability to pursue them over decades in the face of US-orchestrated resistance.

Maybe it should be understood that the beginning of the "Pacific Century" is perhaps the end of the "American Century". That would certainly be an ironic coda to President Obama's visit.

Notes
1. The Philippines Takes China to Court, but It's Public Opinion That Will Decide, April 3, 2014.
2. See here.
3. Philippines: Invite all SE Asia to Pacific pact, Yahoo News, April 10, 2014.
4. China warns US ahead of Obama's visit, fearing high-profile tilt over disputed isles, Reuters, April 10, 2014.
5. Japan to Let US Assume Control of Nuclear Cache, The New York Times, March 23, 2014.
6. Evan Medeiros: China's attempt to isolate Japan worsens bilateral relations, The Asahi Shimbun, April 6, 2014.
7. Top Marine in Japan: If tasked, we could retake the Senkakus from China, Stars and Stripes, April 11, 2014.
8. Asahi poll: 63% oppose Abe's attempt to lift ban on collective self-defense, The Asahi Shimbun, April 7, 2014.
9. Nobody can contain China's development: defense chief, Xinhua, April 8, 2014.

 

American Rooster Prepares to Crow Atop Asian Dunghill

[This piece may be reposted if Asia Times Online is credited and a link provided.]

In other words, it’s time for the United States to engage in a full-throated celebration of the pivot to Asia with what I think is going to be President Obama’s America F*ck Yeah tour of Asian democracies in April 2014.

The trip requires more than a little spadework, given the rather fraught situation in Asia. 

It’s not just that the PRC and the Japan are at each other’s throats and the Philippines has declared that the South China Sea is the new Sudetenland, and the PRC must be met with confrontation, not negotiation.  It’s that the United States is less than completely happy with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s sharp elbows and the fractures they create in the pivot’s united front.

There has been a fascinating flurry of op-eds in US prestige media (Bloomberg, NY Times, Washington Post, and Business Week) highly critical of Abe and his provocative visit to the Yasukuni Shrine…

…a visit that took place in December 2013.  Concerned chin-stroking end-February 2014 is a little late, it would seem.

And for that matter, the highly insulting detail that Prime Minister Abe listened to Joe Biden’s importunities for an hour before blowing him off and visiting the shrine…that was leaked end January.

So why, all of a sudden, does the US have its knickers in a knot concerning last year’s display of Abe’s rather unambiguous historical-revisionist inclinations?

Well, reading the exclusive China Matters divinatory entrails (paywalled! Just kidding) I believe this furor has much to do with President Obama’s announced visit to Asia.

As of now, the PR China is not on the itinerary.  But Japan and the Philippines are.  So is South Korea, reportedly after some strenuous lobbying.

The trip looks like a celebration of the pivot, that China-containment strategy that dares not speak its name but is meant to secure America’s leading position in East Asia by pushing China’s relations with its neighbors in a more polarized and confrontational condition that plays into US military superiority.

More than that, it will make up for ground lost by the dismaying cancellation of President Obama’s previous Asia trip (because of the US debt ceiling farce) and demonstrate to a dubious world that, appearances to the contrary, the United States is still brimming with resolve, the master of events, leader of the coalition of Asian democracies, indeed the universally hailed hegemon of Asia.

I look at President Obama’s trip like one of those imperial tours favored by the Roman and Chinese emperors to demonstrate that the empire’s writ still ran in the borderlands.

However, a certain Asian democracy is openly hedging its bets against the day that the United States changes its mind and decides that its true interests lie somewhere more along the dreaded G2 axis (cooperation between the US and the PRC to order affairs in ways not necessarily to the liking of the other nations of the Pacific.)

That nation, of course, is Japan.

Prime Minister Abe, thanks to his lineage and his personal experience, is in a good position to remember the many times when the United States decided that US and Japanese interests did not necessarily coincide.

They include slights as old as the Portsmouth Treaty (when Teddy Roosevelt decided that Japan was too green a member of the imperial club to enjoy the full fruits of its victory over Tsarist Russia) to that whole World War II unpleasantness (which Abe’s revisionist group consider to be entirely the fault of the United States), to the sudden recognition of the PRC, the torpedoing of the Japanese economy by the Plaza Accord imposed by the United States, and the unnerving undertone of G2 chatter that occasionally pervades US diplomacy.

On a personal level, Prime Minister Abe undoubtedly also remembers how he loyally supported George W. Bush’s confrontational North Korea policy in 2005, only to see Japan—and Abe’s signature issue, the abductees—brushed aside in Chris Hill & Condoleezza Rice’s haste to conclude a transitory agreement with the DPRK.

On a happier note, Prime Minister Abe probably also recalls that Secretary Clinton was a staunch opponent of G2 and an avid supporter of the Asia pivot, with the underlying strategy of employing the alliance with Japan as the keystone of US policy in Asia.  The full story perhaps needs an entire book, but it is worth remembering that President Obama was reportedly prepared to drop the affirmation of the Senkakus as falling under the US-Japan security treaty —presumably in response to some Chinese blandishment—until the tag team of Secretary Clinton and Minister Maehara exploited (or, in my view, concocted) the whole 2010 Senkaku Captain Zhan/rare earth imbroglio  that led to the exact opposite outcome—open affirmation that the Senkakus were covered.  

Subsequently, it became clear that Secretary Clinton had decided to ditch engagement and treat the PRC’s maritime issues as a pretext for a confrontainment policy against China, and use the policy as the foundation of the militarized pivot to Asia.

But Secretary Clinton is gone, at least for the time being, and the decidedly less confrontational John Kerry seems to have been able to take the reins of US diplomacy.

Kerry’s focus on the Middle East has occasioned nervous/resentful mumblings from supporters of the Japan relationship in Washington, for the stated reason that his focus on the Far East is insufficient and the pivot is languishing.  An unstated reason may be that the PRC, because of its somewhat important role in Iran and Syria matters, may be inching toward a quasi-G2 relationship with Kerry that might result in some favors being done for the PRC at the expense of the pivot democracies.

One such favor, I previously speculated, might have been the US demand that Japan demonstrate its nuclear non-proliferation sincerity by returning some weapons grade plutonium it had received from the United States a long time ago.

In any case, I felt that it was necessary for Kerry to establish his tough-on-China credentials, and I believe he did that by sendingout Evan Madeiros to make a big noise about how the US would not tolerate a South China Sea ADIZ.  And the PRC, which, I believe, had already disclaimed any current intention for an SCS ADIZ, promptly said they were considering no such move, thereby allowing Kerry to shift, albeit incrementally, out of the despised Chamberlain-appeasement doghouse into the blessed realm of Churchillian resolve.

So President Obama can go to Asia secure in the knowledge that America’s “stick a thumb in China’s eye” credentials are relatively secure.

With this context, what to make of the concerted campaign to rain on Prime Minister Abe’s parade re Yasukuni?

I think it’s because President Obama wants to use his April trip to affirm the pivot and, more importantly, the indispensable US leadership role in it.

That means cracking the whip on Japan and demonstrating that the US will not allowed itself to get tangled up in the Abe administration’s hopes and dreams for a Japan that is able to exploit the US alliance as an element in its own plans to restore Japan’s sovereignty and military and diplomatic clout in Asia.

It would take a special kind of denial to ignore the fact that Prime Minister Abe is abubble with plans to expand Japan’s diplomatic and security footprint in Asia all the way from the Kuriles to Myanmar and India …or to disregard the fact that these ambitions do not fit cleanly within a hierarchical structure with the US pivot on top, with the US-Japan security alliance as the next layer, and Japan’s relationship with the other Asian democracies guided by the pivot, the security alliance, and the power and the glory of American strategic vision. 

This unpleasant state of affairs is demonstrated by the conundrum that seems to underlay the Abe-bashing: the growing rift between South Korea and Japan.  

One of the nagging problems of the pivot has been the rancor between the Abe and Park administrations, and also South Korea’s un-pivoty predilection for sidling over into the PRC economic and diplomatic camp.

Abe, contrary to the ostensible doctrine of pivot solidarity, seems happy to determinedly and systematically exacerbate the bad blood between Japan and South Korea, not just with Yasukuni but with dismissive remarks by his allies on the lessons of World War II and the comfort women.  And, contrary to the idea that the United States coordinates the pivot, Abe has also been most dismissive of US efforts to insert itself in the dispute.

According to Peter Ennis of Japan Dispatch, the Yasukuni kerfuffle played out as part of the U.S. effort to mediate a rapprochement between Japan and South Korea.

Per Ennis, Vice President Biden thought he had an understanding that Abe would not visit Yasukuni and communicated that perception to President Park.  When it transpired that Abe was indeed planning to visit Yasukuni, Biden made the infamous phone call to try to persuade him not to go, and Abe in essence told him to get stuffed.

Not only did he tell Biden to get stuffed, Abe apparently personally leaked the details of this embarrassment to one of his favorite papers, according to Ennis:

On December 12, Biden himself phoned Abe, and in a lengthy, tense conversation pressed the prime minister to not visit Yasukuni. Sankei Shimbun on Janaury 30, citing unnamed “government sources,” provided a detailed account of the conversation – an account the vice president’s office does not dispute.

(Insiders in Tokyo, citing the close ties between Sankei and Abe, believe the account of the conversation comes directly from Abe himself – an assessment shared by key US officials.)
In their conversation, Biden said to Abe: “I told President Park that ‘I don’t think Mr. Abe will visit Yasukuni Shrine.’ If you indicate you will not visit the shrine, I think Ms. Park will agree to meet you.’”

Abe has long been incensed about what he considers American hectoring against his nationalist convictions, and he told Biden that he intended to visit Yasukuni at some point.

Immediately after Prime Minister Abe maliciously leaked the intelligence that he had spurned Vice President Biden’s appeal to give satisfaction to President Park on the Yasukuni issue, a thunderous op-ed delivered by the concentrated firepower of Richard Armitage, Victor Cha, and Michael Green appeared in the Washington Post calling for President Obama to visit Seoul…

… and it was subsequently announced that South Korea had been added to the itinerary and Japan would not be acting as North Asia’s exclusive host for the Obama visit.

Take that!

Now, in addition to Abe’s desire to trample on the feelings of Biden and Park to wave his freak flag high on the issue of his nationalist revisionist beliefs, I think there were a few other forces at work.

First of all, as I’ve argued elsewhere, Abe does not have a comfortable relationship with the Obama administration.  His US avatar is Dick Cheney, with whom Abe tried to coordinate a China-containment policy during his first term, and his natural allies are the US Republican right wing and pro-Japan/anti-China hawks in the US security and defense establishment.

I think the pointed and public humiliation of Biden was a signal from Abe that he was not under the thumb of the White House, and his allies in the United States could take advantage of the Obama administration’s embarrassment to question the efficacy and execution of the administration’s Japan policy (and its effort to steer a middle course between the PRC & Japan), and lobby for the further evolution of US policy in Asia toward openly Japan-centric doctrine of deterrence and confrontation with the PRC.

Second, the ROK and Japan are direct peer competitors in Asia.  When ROK President Lee Myung-bak was in charge, he openly tried to seize the mantle of Asian leadership (and American ally numero uno) from Japan, which was flailing through its non-LDP interregnum.  Abe, with his nationalist inclinations, is distinctly hostile to Korean presumption.

If one wants to play the deep game, Japan no less than the PRC fears Korean reunification and the emergence of an Asian democracy that might dwarf Japan in economic and national vigor.  One of the less reported stories is Abe’s continual game of footsie with North Korea, with clandestine meetings between Japanese and DPRK diplomats and, in addition, the offer of Switzerland (and I suspect, India) to put their good offices at Japan’s disposal for mediation.

The ostensible context for this back and forth is to obtain closure on the miserable issue of the Japanese abductees; but I suspect the real objective is to achieve some sort of direct rapprochement with North Korea that will give Japan the direct inside track, ditch the PRC-led Five Party Talks regime, wrongfoot the US, PRC, and South Korea in the impending dash for North Korea’s under-developed mineral and human resources…and keep the DPRK alive and the peninsula comfortably split.

In other words, South Korea is welcome to explore its options as a continental power within the PRC’s sphere of influence, using Shandong as its cheap labor hinterland instead of northern Korea.  Japan will be happy to eat South Korea’s lunch in maritime, democratic Asia, thank you very much.

Third, as Abe works to recover Japan’s full military, defense, and security sovereignty, he has no interest in the United States arrogating to itself the privilege of setting Japan’s regional diplomatic agenda.  If anything, it looks like Abe wants to have extensive engagement with the United States, but he wants in the context of peer-to-peer bilateral relations negotiated through explicit mechanisms like the security alliance and the TPP.  His vision for the US-Japan relationship certainly does not entail listening to Joe Biden and the Obama administration’s brainstorms about Asia, especially when they are intended to demonstrate America’s honest-broker cred i.e. attempt to show the ROK and the PRC that the US can constrain Japan’s behavior in a meaningful way.

Abe has gone along with the United States on two rather dismal initiatives that the Pentagon adores—collective self defense and Futenma relocation.  Therefore, by his lights, he probably thinks the United States should, as a matter of mutual respect and alliance loyalty to America’s most important partner in Asia, put up with the crap he wants to dish out to the PRC and South Korea (parenthetically, the Obama administration pointedly did not go as far as Abe in instructing civilian carriers to disregard the ECS ADIZ, which was, by one perspective a matter of supreme moderation and common sense but, from Abe’s perspective, left him out on a limb looking a bit stupid—but also gave him a pretext to complain about equivocal US backing as a justification for Japan’s growing independence in security policy).

I believe that, as I’ve predicted for the last year or so, the pivot chickens are now, inevitably coming home to roost.  The decision to hype the PRC maritime threat has encouraged the frontline Asian democracies, especially Japan, to a point that US leadership is on the cusp of overt challenge.

Japan, the ROK, and the PRC may be well aware of US intentions, but are less convinced of US capabilities in delivering on the promise of a unified, carefully managed and modulated pivot strategy that empowers the US through a militarized containment strategy against the PRC, while preserving the honest broker role for the US and stifling the independent-minded initiatives of the frontline pivot allies.

Instead, it appears that Japan, especially, is quietly going rogue and will do its best to exploit the pivot to pursue its own regional agendas while calling on the US for the support at crunch time which, as the pivot advocate, it must perforce deliver.  

So instead of the implacable united front against the PRC that is the raison d’etre of the pivot, we have an alliance in flux, deterrent that is equivocal and ripe for testing by the PRC, and increasingly close and tense encounters in the maritime zone.

In other words, a recipe for…something, not sure what, but certainly not peace, stability, and shared prosperity that Hillary Clinton promised to deliver with the pivot.

Japan is sufficiently invested in the US relationship to support the alliance and even the Obama administration as it begins its long but inevitable descent into lame-duck status.

But meticulously orchestrated American announcements, initiatives, and trips to Asia can only do so much as Japan, and Asian allies that increasingly look to Japan for regional leadership, see the need and benefits of going their own separate ways.

They say the sun doesn’t rise because the rooster crows.  But in this case it did. I think President Obama is learning that the sun did rise because the rooster crowed i.e. that Japanese assertiveness is a direct consequence of the empowerment of the hawkish establishment in Japan by the US pivot doctrine.

Trouble is, now that the sun is rising, it looks like it will keep rising on its own.

And there’s little that the rooster can do about it.