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In
Washington, it is widely assumed that a showdown with Iran over its nuclear
ambitions will be the first major crisis to engulf the next secretary of
defense -- whether it be former Senator Chuck Hagel, as President Obama
desires, or someone else if he fails to win Senate confirmation. With few signs of an imminent breakthrough in
talks aimed at peacefully resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, many analysts
believe that military action -- if not by Israel, then by the United States --
could be on this year’s agenda.
Lurking
just behind the Iranian imbroglio, however, is a potential crisis of far
greater magnitude, and potentially far more imminent than most of us
imagine. China’s determination to assert
control over disputed islands in the potentially energy-rich waters of the East
and South China Seas, in the face of stiffening resistance from Japan and the
Philippines along with greater regional assertiveness by the United States,
spells trouble not just regionally, but potentially globally.
Islands,
Islands, Everywhere
The
possibility of an Iranian crisis remains in the spotlight because of the
obvious risk of disorder in the Greater Middle East and its threat to global
oil production and shipping. A crisis in
the East or South China Seas (essentially, western extensions of the Pacific
Ocean) would, however, pose a greater peril because of the possibility of a
U.S.-China military confrontation and the threat to Asian economic stability.
The
United States is bound by treaty to come to the assistance of Japan or the
Philippines if either country is attacked by a third party, so any armed clash
between Chinese and Japanese or Filipino forces could trigger American military
intervention. With so much of the world’s
trade focused on Asia, and the American, Chinese, and Japanese economies tied
so closely together in ways too essential to ignore, a clash of almost any sort
in these vital waterways might paralyze international commerce and trigger a
global recession (or worse).
All
of this should be painfully obvious and so rule out such a possibility -- and
yet the likelihood of such a clash occurring has been on the rise in recent
months, as China and its neighbors continue to ratchet up the bellicosity of
their statements and bolster their military forces in the contested areas. Washington’s continuing statements about its
ongoing plans for a “pivot” to, or “rebalancing” of, its forces in the Pacific
have only fuelled Chinese intransigence and intensified a rising sense of
crisis in the region. Leaders on all
sides continue to affirm their country’s inviolable rights to the contested
islands and vow to use any means necessary to resist encroachment by rival
claimants. In the meantime, China has
increased the frequency and scale of its naval maneuvers in waters claimed by
Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, further enflaming tensions in the region.
Ostensibly,
these disputes revolve around the question of who owns a constellation of
largely uninhabited atolls and islets claimed by a variety of nations. In the East China Sea, the islands in
contention are called the Diaoyus by China and the Senkakus by Japan. At present, they are administered by Japan,
but both countries claim sovereignty over them.
In the South China Sea, several island groups are in contention,
including the Spratly chain and the Paracel Islands (known in China as the
Nansha and Xisha Islands, respectively).
China claims all of these islets, while Vietnam claims some of the
Spratlys and Paracels. Brunei, Malaysia,
and the Philippines also claim some of the Spratlys.
Far
more is, of course, at stake than just the ownership of a few uninhabited
islets. The seabeds surrounding them are
believed to sit atop vast reserves of oil and natural gas. Ownership of the islands would naturally
confer ownership of the reserves -- something all of these countries
desperately desire. Powerful forces of
nationalism are also at work: with rising popular fervor, the Chinese believe
that the islands are part of their national territory and any other claims
represent a direct assault on China’s sovereign rights; the fact that Japan --
China’s brutal invader and occupier during World War II -- is a rival claimant
to some of them only adds a powerful tinge of victimhood to Chinese nationalism
and intransigence on the issue. By the
same token, the Japanese, Vietnamese, and Filipinos, already feeling threatened
by China’s growing wealth and power, believe no less firmly that not bending on
the island disputes is an essential expression of their nationhood.
Long
ongoing, these disputes have escalated recently. In May 2011, for instance, the Vietnamese
reported that Chinese warships were harassing oil-exploration vessels operated
by the state-owned energy company PetroVietnam in the South China Sea. In two instances, Vietnamese authorities
claimed, cables attached to underwater survey equipment were purposely
slashed. In April 2012, armed Chinese
marine surveillance ships blocked efforts by Filipino vessels to inspect
Chinese boats suspected of illegally fishing off Scarborough Shoal, an islet in
the South China Sea claimed by both countries.
The
East China Sea has similarly witnessed tense encounters of late. Last September, for example, Japanese
authorities arrested 14 Chinese citizens who had attempted to land on one of
the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands to press their country’s claims, provoking
widespread anti-Japanese protests across China and a series of naval
show-of-force operations by both sides in the disputed waters.
Regional
diplomacy, that classic way of settling disputes in a peaceful manner, has been
under growing strain recently thanks to these maritime disputes and the
accompanying military encounters. In
July 2012, at the annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), Asian leaders were unable to agree on a final communiqué, no matter
how anodyne -- the first time that had happened in the organization’s 46-year
history. Reportedly, consensus on a
final document was thwarted when Cambodia, a close ally of China’s, refused to
endorse compromise language on a proposed “code of conduct” for resolving
disputes in the South China Sea. Two
months later, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Beijing in
an attempt to promote negotiations on the disputes, she was reviled in the
Chinese press, while officials there refused to cede any ground at all.
As
2012 ended and the New Year began, the situation only deteriorated. On December 1st, officials in Hainan
Province, which administers the Chinese-claimed islands in the South China Sea,
announced a new policy for 2013: Chinese warships would now be empowered to
stop, search, or simply repel foreign ships that entered the claimed waters and
were suspected of conducting illegal activities ranging, assumedly, from
fishing to oil drilling. This move
coincided with an increase in the size and frequency of Chinese naval
deployments in the disputed areas.
On
December 13th, the Japanese military scrambled F-15 fighter jets when a Chinese
marine surveillance plane flew into airspace near the Diaoyu/Senkaku
Islands. Another worrisome incident
occurred on January 8th, when four Chinese surveillance ships entered
Japanese-controlled waters around those islands for 13 hours. Two days later, Japanese fighter jets were again
scrambled when a Chinese surveillance plane returned to the islands. Chinese fighters then came in pursuit, the
first time supersonic jets from both sides flew over the disputed area. The
Chinese clearly have little intention of backing down, having indicated that
they will increase their air and naval deployments in the area, just as the
Japanese are doing.
Powder
Keg in the Pacific
While
war clouds gather in the Pacific sky, the question remains: Why, pray tell, is
this happening now?
Several
factors seem to be conspiring to heighten the risk of confrontation, including
leadership changes in China and Japan, and a geopolitical reassessment by the
United States.
*
In China, a new leadership team is placing renewed emphasis on military strength
and on what might be called national assertiveness. At the 18th Party Congress of the Chinese
Communist Party, held last November in Beijing, Xi Jinping was named both party
head and chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him, in effect,
the nation’s foremost civilian and military official. Since then, Xi has made several heavily
publicized visits to assorted Chinese military units, all clearly intended to
demonstrate the Communist Party’s determination, under his leadership, to boost
the capabilities and prestige of the country’s army, navy, and air force. He has already linked this drive to his
belief that his country should play a more vigorous and assertive role in the
region and the world.
In
a speech to soldiers in the city of Huizhou, for example, Xi spoke of his
“dream” of national rejuvenation: “This dream can be said to be a dream of a
strong nation; and for the military, it is the dream of a strong
military.” Significantly, he used the
trip to visit the Haikou, a destroyer assigned to the fleet responsible for
patrolling the disputed waters of the South China Sea. As he spoke, a Chinese surveillance plane
entered disputed air space over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea,
prompting Japan to scramble those F-15 fighter jets.
*
In Japan, too, a new leadership team is placing renewed emphasis on military
strength and national assertiveness. On
December 16th, arch-nationalist Shinzo Abe returned to power as the nation’s
prime minister. Although he campaigned
largely on economic issues, promising to revive the country’s lagging economy,
Abe has made no secret of his intent to bolster the Japanese military and
assume a tougher stance on the East China Sea dispute.
In
his first few weeks in office, Abe has already announced plans to increase
military spending and review an official apology made by a former government
official to women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during
World War II. These steps are sure to
please Japan’s rightists, but certain to inflame anti-Japanese sentiment in
China, Korea, and other countries it once occupied.
Equally
worrisome, Abe promptly negotiated an agreement with the Philippines for
greater cooperation on enhanced “maritime security” in the western Pacific, a
move intended to counter growing Chinese assertiveness in the region. Inevitably, this will spark a harsh Chinese
response -- and because the United States has mutual defense treaties with both
countries, it will also increase the risk of U.S. involvement in future
engagements at sea.
*
In the United States, senior officials are debating implementation of the
“Pacific pivot” announced by President Obama in a speech before the Australian
Parliament a little over a year ago. In
it, he promised that additional U.S. forces would be deployed in the region,
even if that meant cutbacks elsewhere.
“My guidance is clear,” he declared.
“As we plan and budget for the future, we will allocate the resources
necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” While Obama never quite said that his
approach was intended to constrain the rise of China, few observers doubt that
a policy of “containment” has returned to the Pacific.
Indeed,
the U.S. military has taken the first steps in this direction, announcing, for
example, that by 2017 all three U.S. stealth planes, the F-22, F-35, and B-2,
would be deployed to bases relatively near China and that by 2020 60% of U.S.
naval forces will be stationed in the Pacific (compared to 50% today). However, the nation’s budget woes have led
many analysts to question whether the Pentagon is actually capable of fully
implementing the military part of any Asian pivot strategy in a meaningful
way. A study conducted by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) at the behest of Congress, released
last summer, concluded that the Department of Defense “has not adequately
articulated the strategy behind its force posture planning [in the
Asia-Pacific] nor aligned the strategy with resources in a way that reflects
current budget realities.”
This,
in turn, has fueled a drive by military hawks to press the administration to
spend more on Pacific-oriented forces and to play a more vigorous role in
countering China's "bullying" behavior in the East and South China
Seas. “[America’s Asian allies] are
waiting to see whether America will live up to its uncomfortable but necessary
role as the true guarantor of stability in East Asia, or whether the region
will again be dominated by belligerence and intimidation,” former Secretary of
the Navy and former Senator James Webb wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Although the administration has responded to
such taunts by reaffirming its pledge to bolster its forces in the Pacific,
this has failed to halt the calls for an even tougher posture by
Washington. Obama has already been
chided for failing to provide sufficient backing to Israel in its struggle with
Iran over nuclear weapons, and it is safe to assume that he will face even
greater pressure to assist America’s allies in Asia were they to be threatened
by Chinese forces.
Add
these three developments together, and you have the makings of a powder keg --
potentially at least as explosive and dangerous to the global economy as any
confrontation with Iran. Right now,
given the rising tensions, the first close encounter of the worst kind, in
which, say, shots were unexpectedly fired and lives lost, or a ship or plane
went down, might be the equivalent of lighting a fuse in a crowded, over-armed
room. Such an incident could occur
almost any time. The Japanese press has
reported that government officials there are ready to authorize fighter pilots
to fire warning shots if Chinese aircraft penetrate the airspace over the
Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. A Chinese
general has said that such an act would count as the start of "actual
combat." That the irrationality of such an event will be apparent to
anyone who considers the deeply tangled economic relations among all these
powers may prove no impediment to the situation -- as at the beginning of World
War I -- simply spinning out of everyone’s control.
Can
such a crisis be averted? Yes, if the
leaders of China, Japan, and the United States, the key countries involved,
take steps to defuse the belligerent and ultra-nationalistic pronouncements now
holding sway and begin talking with one another about practical steps to
resolve the disputes. Similarly, an
emotional and unexpected gesture -- Prime Minister Abe, for instance, pulling a
Nixon and paying a surprise goodwill visit to China -- might carry the day and
change the atmosphere. Should these
minor disputes in the Pacific get out of hand, however, not just those directly
involved but the whole planet will look with sadness and horror on the failure
of everyone involved.
