<http://truth-out.org/news/item/13623-four-more-years-the-asia-pivot>
Four More Years: The Asia Pivot
Sunday, 30 December 2012 12:07
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus | News Analysis
In March 1990, Time magazine ran an article titled "Ripples in The
American Lake." It was not about small waves in that body of water
just north of Fort Lewis, Washington. It was talking about the
Pacific Ocean-the largest body of water on the planet, embracing over
half of humanity and the three largest economies in the world. Time
did not invent the term-it is generally attributed to Gen. Douglas
MacArthur, the U.S. Pacific commander during the Second World War-but
its casual use by the publication was a reflection of more than 100
years of American policy in this immense area.
The Asia-Pacific region has hosted at least five American conflicts
over the years-the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War,
the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War-and is
today the focus of a "strategic pivot" by the Obama administration,
although that is a bit of a misnomer. The Pacific basin has long been
home to the United States' largest trading partners, and Washington
deploys more than 320,000 military personnel in the region, including
60 percent of its navy. The American flag flies over bases in Japan,
the Philippines, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, the Marshall
Islands, Guam, and Wake.
It is one of the most perilous regions on earth right now-and, for
the first time since the collapse of the old Soviet Union, two major
nuclear powers are bumping up against one another. As volatile as the
Middle East is, one of the most dangerous pieces of real estate on
the planet is a scattering of tiny islands in the East China Sea,
where China, Japan, and the United States find themselves in a
standoff that feels distressingly like the Cold War.
Tension over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, however, is just one of
several foreign policy challenges in the Asia-Pacific region, each
with its own characteristics and history. Japan and South Korea are
in a face-off over an island that Tokyo calls Takeshima and Seoul
calls Dokdo, and Moscow and Tokyo are at loggerheads over the Kurile
islands. Moreover, Beijing is throwing its weight around in the South
China Sea, North Korea just launched a long-range ballistic missile
(and is possibly considering a nuclear test), and Washington is
recruiting allies against China, sometimes by turning a blind eye to
serious human rights violations.
How the Obama administration responds to these issues over the next
four years will go a long way toward determining whether the ocean
lives up to its name-pacific means "peaceful"-or once again becomes
an arena for tragedy. So far the record is not encouraging.
A Finger on the Scale
Washington has stumbled badly in the dangerous crisis over islands
that China calls the Diaoyu and Japan calls the Senkaku. The dispute
over these uninhabited specks in the East China Sea islands goes back
to the Sino-Japan War of 1895 when Tokyo wrested them from Beijing.
In 1971, the Americans-caught up in the Cold War and refusing to
recognize communist China- made the matter a lot more complex by
ignoring two post-World War II treaties requiring Japan to return its
conquests to their original owners, and instead handed the islands
over to Japan.
When China protested, Tokyo and Beijing agreed to kick the can down
the road and delay any final decisions on sovereignty to some later
date. That all changed when Japan-pressed by right-wing
nationalists-purchased three of the islands this past summer and
altered the status quo. To make matters worse, the United States
declared that it would stand by Japan in any military conflict, thus
raising the ante from a local confrontation between two Asians giants
to a potential clash between nuclear powers.
China sees the islands as part of its defensive parameter, an
understandable point of view considering the country's history. China
has been the victim of invasion and exploitation by colonial powers,
including Japan, dating back to the first Opium War in 1839. Beijing
is convinced Washington is surrounding it with potentially hostile
alliances and that the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute is part of a U.S.
strategy to keep China down. There is an economic dimension to the
issue as well. China would like to exploit oil and gas deposits, as
well as fishing grounds, in the East China Sea.
Extending the U.S.-Japan mutual support treaty to the islands is a
major mistake. China has no intention of attacking its main Asian
trade and investment partner, and putting Tokyo under Washington's
nuclear umbrella around this issue has helped unleash a powerful
current of nationalism in Japan. For instance, Tokyo is debating
whether to put Japanese Self-Defense Forces on Yonaguni Island or in
the Ryukyu chain. That would put Japanese troops squarely in the
middle of China's first line of maritime defense. Yonaguni is a long
way from Tokyo, but on a clear day you can see the mountains of
Taiwan from its beaches. The island's residents are opposed to the
Self-Defense Force deployment.
The new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has been particularly strident,
openly talking of dumping Japan's anti-war constitution and building
nuclear weapons. He comes from a long line of military-minded
nationalists. His grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was a member of
Japan's wartime cabinet and was considered a war criminal. Rather
than going to jail, however, Nobusuke was "rehabilitated" after the
war and became prime minister in 1957. Abe has stonewalled demands by
China and other countries in the region to apologize for its brutal
policies during World War II.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Abe was asked if there was
a "possibility that the two Asian powers could go to war." According
to the Times, "Mr. Abe just smiled and walked away."
If that exchange does not give Washington pause, it should.
China has a strong legal case for ownership of the islands, and
rather than rattling sabers, Washington should encourage the UN and
the International Court of Justice to get involved. What it should
not do is green light Abe, who might draw Washington into a
confrontation with China. In 1914 Austria attacked Serbia. Russia
mobilized, and Germany, bound by treaty to Austria, followed suit.
That ended very badly.
Know When to Hold 'Em
The disputes in the South China Sea are very different from those in
the East China Sea, although some of the actors are the same. Beijing
claims that it owns a vast expanse of the Sea-including the Paracel
Islands, the Spratly Islands, Scarborough Shoal, and numerous reefs
and shallows-also claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei, and
the Philippines. At stake are rich fishing grounds and potential oil
and gas deposits, as well as a considerable portion of the world's
trade routes.
The Chinese have been rather heavy handed in the dispute, refusing to
negotiate with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)
and insisting on bilateral talks instead. China vs. Brunei is hardly
a level diplomatic playing field.
The standoff has given the United States an opportunity to intervene
as a "neutral broker," a posture that has pushed every paranoid
button in Beijing. China has responded by stepping up its patrols in
the South China Sea, even sabotaging joint Indian-Vietnam oil
exploration near the Paracels. New Delhi-which has its own tensions
with China over its northern border-is threatening to send naval
vessels into the disputed area.
The crisis is solvable, but a few things need to happen.
China must back off, because its current claim violates the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas. A place to start is for
ASEAN and Beijing to work out a "code of conduct" to resolve disputes
peacefully. But Washington should stay out of this fight. Given the
strong military component of the "pivot," one can hardly blame China
for assuming that U.S. involvement is not aimed at resolving disputes.
"If you are a strategic thinker in China, you do not have to be a
paranoid conspiracy theorist to think that the U.S. is trying to
bandwagon Asia against China," says Simon Tay, chair of the Singapore
Institute of International Affairs.
Washington has shifted naval forces into the Pacific and is in the
process of putting 2,500 Marines in northern Australia. While 2,500
Marines are hardly likely to tip the balance of power in Asia, it
seems an unnecessary provocation. The United States is moving air
power into the region as well, including B-1 bombers, B-52s, and F-22
stealth fighters. In early November, 47,000 U.S. and Japanese forces
carried out joint military exercises.
Washington is also re-negotiating its Mutual Support Treaty with
Japan, which will include the deployment of an advanced anti-missile
system (ABM). The ABM is ostensibly directed at North Korea, but
China is unhappy because it could pose a threat to Beijing's modest
nuclear missile force. In general, ABM systems are destabilizing,
which is why the ABM Treaty was negotiated between the United States
and the Soviet Union in 1972. The Obama administration should
repudiate the Bush administration's 2002 scrapping of the ABM Treaty
and instead focus on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, a promise
made in 2008 but ignored ever since.
An Ocean Vast Enough for All
North Korea may be a threat to its own people, but it hardly poses a
major danger to the United States or its allies South Korea and
Japan. Yes, the country has nuclear weapons, but any use of them
would be tantamount to national suicide, and the North Koreans have
always shown a strong self-preservationist streak. If North Korea
seems paranoid, it is partly because each year the United States,
South Korea, and sometimes Japan carry out war games aimed at
intervening in the event of "instability" in the north. U.S. Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta also threatened North Korea with nuclear
weapons last year, hardly a strategy to get the Pyongyang regime to
give them up.
North Korea mainly serves as an excuse for Japan and the United
States to militarize the North Pacific and expand their ABM system.
But it is a poor, backward country that has trouble feeding its own
people. (Yet Hollywood's latest version of the 1950s anti-communist
classic Red Dawn features North Korean paratroopers invading Alaska.
Really.)
The White House should take a big deep breath, ignore the bombast,
stop threatening North Korea with nuclear weapons, retire the war
games, and restart aid programs. The only people hurt by the aid
cutoffs are poor North Koreans.
Washington sees Indonesia is a potentially valuable ally in the
alliance against China, as well as a source of valuable raw
materials, and has thus given Jakarta a free pass on its human rights
record. But for an administration that trumpets its support for
democracy and says it has a moral view of the world, that kind of
realpolitik is unacceptable. The United States should finally own up
to its role in the 1965 Indonesian coup that killed up to a million
communists, leftists, trade unionists, and progressives. It should
also halt all military aid to the Jakarta regime until the
Indonesians prosecute those who committed atrocities in East Timor
and West Papua. The United States should have nothing to do with
training Kopassus, the Indonesian special forces unit that organized
many of the East Timor massacres and is currently trying to crush an
independence movement in West Papua.
Some of the White House's actions have bordered on petty. For
example, the United States is organizing an 11-nation Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade pact that was designed to exclude China, the big
dog on the Asia-Pacific block. In retaliation, China is encouraging
the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that will exclude the
United States.
The United States is a Pacific power, but Asia is a very different
place than it was two hundred years ago. You can't dispatch "Chinese"
Gordon and a couple of gunboats and get your way anymore. Nor can you
deal with rivals by building Cold War-style alliances and threatening
to use force. The world is too small, Asia is too big, and war would
be catastrophic. The Pacific is no one's "lake," but an ocean vast
enough for all.
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