The Road to War (Part II: The Thucydides Trap)

[LeveragedBuyout]

Part II in a continuing series, this thread dealing with the events precipitating a Thucydides Trap between the United States and China. The Thucydides Trap was coined by a Harvard professor to refer to a scenario where "a rising power causes fear in an established power, which escalates towards war" (per the Wikipedia definition). Previous examples of this include Athens challenging Sparta, and the German Empire challenging the British Empire. Will the Chinese challenge to the United States become another such event?

The Road To War (Part I: Trade)
The Road to War (Part II: The Thucydides Trap) - This Thread

As Tensions Continue, China Has No Interest in Backing Down to the U.S. - China Real Time Report - WSJ

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• September 23, 2014, 5:30 AM HKT

As Tensions Continue, China Has No Interest in Backing Down to the U.S.
By Ying Ma

U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice talked with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Associated Press
U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice visited China earlier this month to pave the way for President Barack Obama’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping after an Asia-Pacific trade summit in Beijing this November. Rice’s visit produced no breakthroughs, and each side walked away having voiced their gripes against the other.

In many ways, Rice’s visit was indicative of a Sino-American relationship that is currently fraught with tension. Prior to Obama’s November visit, his administration should do some serious soul searching about its China policy.

In the face of a rising and more assertive China, many in Washington have argued that the United States must demonstrate firmer resolve to force China to back down from challenging the U.S.-led security order in Asia. These recommendations are dangerous, argues Hugh White, professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University, because China is serious about challenging U.S. primacy in Asia and has no interest in backing down.

Obama’s detractors blame the president for having emboldened China and sowed doubts about U.S. alliances in Asia by appearing feckless before threats from Syria, Russia and the Islamic State. Prof. White believes, on the contrary, that more robust threats from Washington to punish Beijing for provocations would only heighten the risk of Sino-American confrontation.

Prof. White’s warning helps explain the obstacles in America’s current interactions with China. The Obama administration in recent months has attempted to step up its deterrence against China with tougher rhetoric, more categorical commitments to allies in Asia and a beefed-up U.S. military presence in the region.

In April, President Barack Obama reiterated that U.S. defense obligations to Japan include islands claimed by China, and noted that U.S. treaty commitments to the Philippines, another country with whom China has territorial disputes, are “iron-clad.” His administration has also negotiated the return of American troops to the Philippines and signed a new Force Posture Agreement with Australia to deploy 2,500 Marines to Down Under.

A Chinese coast guard vessel, right, fired water cannon at a Vietnamese vessel off the coast of Vietnam after China deployed an oil rig in disputed South China Sea waters.
Associated Press
More In China-US

• Chinese Hacked U.S. Military Contractors 20 Times in a Year
• Bad Timing: China Activist's Trial Opens With U.S. Envoy in Town
• Going Maverick: Lessons from China's Buzzing of a U.S. Navy Aircraft
• Aerial Aggression: Chinese Intercepts of U.S. Planes Raise Alarm
• Divide and Conquer? Chinese Navy Starts Playing Nice With U.S.

China followed Obama’s words of admonishment with the multi-month deployment of a giant oil rig in waters it disputes with Vietnam (a friendly non-U.S. ally) near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. China has also continued to engage in land reclamation projects on reefs it disputes with the Philippines in the South China Sea. The projects are fiercely condemned by the Philippines as an effort to unilaterally change facts on the ground.

Many in the U.S. policy community believe that Obama is simply not pushing back against Beijing hard enough. Prof. White suggests, however, that pushing back was never the winning formula. “When Obama declared he was determined to preserve the status quo [of power in Asia],” he wrote earlier this summer, “China was supposed to back off graciously. But it didn’t work. Instead Beijing pushed back harder, by escalating its maritime disputes with U.S. friends and allies.”

China has come to view the U.S. as the biggest culprit for heightened tensions in the region. Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies and Executive Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, said soon after China deployed its oil rig off the coast of Vietnam that when smaller countries in Asia confront China on territorial disputes, “they are not confronting China alone… they have the U.S. behind them.”

Amid the finger pointing and heightened regional tensions, two scenarios offer the possibility of averting the catastrophic consequences of breakdown in the U.S.-China relationship. Prof. White provides one such solution in his book, The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power: The U.S. should relinquish primacy in Asia and negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with China.

The problem is that a China-dominated Asia is one that many countries in Asia would resist and one that even the most knee-jerk China advocate in Washington would not endorse. U.S. gestures of cooperation and reassurance in the security realm, though having produced some results, have also failed to elicit more cooperative behavior from Beijing overall. Just this summer, the U.S. Navy engaged in some significant trust building with the Chinese military and welcomed China as a first-time participate in the U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific naval exercise (RIMPAC) in Hawaii, the largest international maritime exercise in the world. During the exercises, China became the first Rimpac participant to send a reconnaissance ship to international waters near the drills to conduct surveillance on the other participants. Then on Aug. 19, just a few weeks after the exercises concluded, China sent a fighter jet to intercept and harass a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft flying in international air space off China’s southern coast.

These instances do not suggest that Beijing wishes to play nice.

Huang Jing, director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has argued that there is ultimately only one thing China can do to avert Sino-American confrontation: foster a democratic transition through political reform. Without such reforms, Prof. Huang contends, the U.S. will ultimately view China as a threat and will seek to contain its rise—even if both countries seek peace.

While some believe that such a political transition in China is well on its way, most other China observers expect China’s current rulers and political system to remain in place for the quite some time.

Without game changers such as the relinquishment of U.S. primacy in Asia and a transition to democratic liberalization in China, the U.S. and China could be left wrestling with heightened tensions and potential armed conflict for the foreseeable future.

In a world where Beijing does not intend to back down, Washington’s displays of resolve might continue to lead Beijing to push back harder. Strengthening U.S. deterrence against Chinese provocations could still remain justified for other good reasons, but a U.S. foreign policy based on the assumption of Beijing’s speedy retreat could be horribly mistaken.

 

[Aepsilons]

Excellent!

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

http://online.wsj.com/articles/as-asia-tensions-cool-putin-turns-up-the-heat-1411447970

As Asia Tensions Cool, Putin Turns Up the Heat
Xi Recalibrates: Two Leaders' Differences Spur Shift in Challenge for U.S.

Sept. 23, 2014 12:52 a.m. ET

China's Xi Jinping, left, and Russia's Vladimir Putin talk at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Sept. 11. Zuma Press

BEIJING—The challenge to the U.S.-led global order has taken a surprising turn.

In Asia, a protracted bout of tensions spurred by China's territorial assertiveness appears to be simmering down. Now it is Russia turning up the heat with its intervention in Ukraine and wider ambitions in Europe.

This switch underscores the distinct personalities, tactics and strategic resources wielded by two ambitious strongmen--China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin.

The two leaders have plenty in common. They are driven by a deep sense of wounded national pride and a bitter resentment of the West. Russia is still haunted by the collapse of the Soviet Union; Chinese memories remain poisoned by the country's "century of humiliation" under imperialism. Whenever they can, they team up diplomatically against America.

Both Messrs. Xi and Putin style themselves as architects of a national renaissance that impels them to reshape their countries' peripheries.

When he rose to power two years ago, Mr. Xi took an already hard Chinese line toward the region—and then gave it a new push.

Japan and the Philippines, two U.S. allies, took the brunt. Chinese paramilitary armadas bore down on a set of disputed islets in the East China Sea administered by Japan and harassed a detachment of Philippine marines on a lonely South China Sea outpost.

Elsewhere, a Chinese state energy company reinforced China's maritime claims to waters off Vietnam by deploying a gigantic oil drilling rig there, a move that triggered a naval standoff.

To the west, People's Liberation Army soldiers pushed into Indian-controlled territory across a disputed stretch of land border.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned that Asia resembled Europe on the eve of World War II. Large majorities in many Asian countries agreed that China had become a threat to peace, a Pew survey showed.

Today, however, some of these strains are melting away. Mr. Xi has just wrapped up a successful visit to India. The rig has departed. Japan counts far fewer Chinese naval and paramilitary vessels intruding into waters around the Senkaku islands, which China calls the Diaoyus, a tally that's become a key measure of the troubled relationship between the rivals.

Japanese and Chinese diplomats have been meeting. There's even talk of an Abe-Xi summit at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Beijing later this year.

Amid all this, the U.S. "pivot" to Asia has taken a back seat as President Barack Obama has swiveled to Russian aggression in Ukraine and as he pursues war on the Islamic State.

Make no mistake: China's challenge hasn't gone away. But Mr. Xi has recalibrated his approach, at least temporarily, while Mr. Putin pursues open confrontation in the face of Western sanctions. And this speaks both to the contrasts in their personalities and the different cards they have to play.

Mr. Putin has shown himself to be a risk taker. He hasn't hesitated to use violence to roll back the advance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

After annexing Crimea, his troops are now in the eastern part of Ukraine supporting separatists against Kiev, according to NATO officials, an allegation the Kremlin denies. On Saturday, NATO's top commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, said a cease-fire was operating "in name only." The question now troubling Europe is whether Mr. Putin will embark on new adventures in the Baltic states as he pursues his vision of a "greater Russia."

Mr. Xi is far more careful. There have been dangerous moments, which might have gotten out of hand, most recently when a Chinese military jet flew perilously close to a U.S. P-8 spy plane and performed a barrel-roll to show off its weapons payload.

Yet an outright Chinese lunge for territory has never seemed likely. In fact, Mr. Xi has consistently signaled caution by stopping just short of actions that might trigger conflict and escalate into a superpower confrontation.

In the South China Sea, China's strategy of acquiring territory has become known as "salami slicing"—incremental advances, reef by reef, rock by rock.

Mr. Xi can afford to be circumspect: China is an ascendant power, Russia is in long-term decline.

Time is on his side. He calculates that smaller Asian states will look hard at China's trajectory—its rapidly expanding economy and growing military budgets—and bend to its will without a shot being fired.

Other powers can be played with a mixture of hard and soft diplomacy. On his recent trip to India Mr. Xi pledged investment deals worth $20 billion while, at the same time, Chinese troops infiltrated across the border.

There's a world of difference, too, in the ability of China and Russia to finance their plans for territorial aggrandizement.

Russia's much weaker economy is narrowly reliant on exports of oil and gas. China is a manufacturing and industrial colossus with some $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. That is why Mr. Xi is able to mix threats in the region with lavish inducements.

It also helps to explain why Mr. Xi's challenge to the U.S. is the most potent in the long run, but Mr. Putin's may be the more immediately dangerous.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

Top DoD Official: US Will 'Respond' if Japan-China Dispute Escalates | Defense News | defensenews.com

Top DoD Official: US Will 'Respond' if Japan-China Dispute Escalates
Sep. 30, 2014 - 02:54PM |
By HAYAT NORIMINE

WASHINGTON — The US will respond with military force if allies in the Pacific region are threatened, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said on Tuesday in response to questions about Japan’s dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands.

Japan and China both claim ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, located east of China and south of Japan. US officials have been on Japan’s side, stating that Article 5 of the US-Japan Defense treaty created in 1951 lists the territory under Japan’s control.

During his talk at the Council on Foreign Relations, Work discussed defense strategies toward the Asia-Pacific region.

“While the Senkakus are under Japanese control, Article 5 applies, and we would respond if there was an attempt to take the Senkakus,” Work said. He later added, “We would definitely respond militarily to certainly any engagements against our allies.”

The Pentagon official called Japan the “cornerstone of our alliances in Asia.”

In 1997, Japan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Pentagon crafted defense guidelines on how the countries would cooperate in times of conflict. Japanese and US officials announced last year that they would revise the guidelines to close any “gaps” in collaboration.

US forces have recently poured into Japan as the country attempts to expand its defense posture. Work said that by 2020, the Navy and the Air Force will have stationed 60 percent of its forces in the Asia-Pacific region, a total of 100,000 troops, and that the department will continue to expand its reach regardless of the defense budget.

“That is what makes us the only true global power,” he said.

Work and others said Japan’s concerns about the potential for conflicts with China and North Korea have caused a shift in Japan’s military policy. While the country remains officially pacifist, US Marines have begun training Japanese soldiers to broaden the country’s military capacity. The government now asserts the right of “collective self-defense,” meaning Japan can come to the military aid of an ally who is threatened.

The US military is stationing more weaponry, such as ballistic missile defense ships, maritime patrol aircraft and missile defense radars in the region. The replacement facility for Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa is moving forward, Work said, making it the first new military base in the country since World War II.

Dov Zakheim, former Pentagon comptroller, said he thought Work was “overly optimistic” about its Asia-Pacific reach, citing budget limitations. But Zakheim said the US strongly benefits from keeping close ties to Japan.

“They can go nuclear,” Zakheim said. “They can do it in a matter of months.” ■

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

US-China-Japan: Beware the ‘Megarian Trap’ | The Diplomat

US-China-Japan: Beware the ‘Megarian Trap’
Classical antiquity offers a lesson in the perils of economic warfare.

By Vasilis Trigkas
October 04, 2014

“That decision may be judged irrational or merely a miscalculation of likely consequences, but it is like many similar ones throughout history in which passion inspired by old hatreds and wounded honor are the cause of dangerous actions.”

Donald Kagan

As the United States and China continue to play geopolitical chess in Asia, forming or renewing economic political and military alliances, it is pleasing to note that leading scholars in international relations from bothEast and West have once more turned their attention to Thucydides, the 5th century Athenian historian. More than two millennia old, Thucydides’ work has nonetheless become a center of vigorous debate among American and Chinese strategists alike, with the Chinese political science association dedicating a panel to it at its annual 2014 conference in Beijing. Whereas scholars and generals once looked to the Peloponnesian War to understand the conflict between U.S. naval power vs. Soviet land power, today they study it in hopes of neutralizing the rising security competition between a status quo power, the United States, and a rising/recovering power, the Peoples Republic of China.

But for all the interest in the study of classical antiquity, one area that has not received as much attention as it might is the comparison between the Athenian and Chinese ability to coerce an adversary through economic clout. Like Classical Athens, China today has repeatedly used its economic muscle to coerce states bold enough to confront it. The most recent case is the boycotting of Japanese brands. Four years ago the embargo on rare earths almost strangled the technology-intensive and export-dependent Japanese economy. And now latest reports highlight the downward trend in Japanese investments in China, suggesting the technologically hungry Chinese economy may be about to pay a similar price.

Even assuming that China is right to confront its neighbors’ claims of sovereignty over disputed territory, commercial retaliation is not an effective strategy. Embargos can produce a slow and very painful economic death, and embitter the citizens who must suffer the consequences, who may therefore view it as highly confrontational and warlike. The result could be lasting ill-will towards the state that initiated the embargo and polarized public opinion for many years to come. That in turn could have dire consequences for regional peace and stability.

The Megarian Degree

One of the decisions that polarized the Athenian assembly, in a critical moment for the preservation of peace, was the initiation of what is known to be the first official economic embargo in history. According to Thucydides, withdrawing this act of economic warfare by Athens against her neighboring city-state of Megara was the only condition that the Spartans put to the Athenians on the eve of the Peloponnesian war, offering peace in return.

Megara was a strategically located city-state, important to both Athens and Sparta. It lay between Corinth and Athens at the bottleneck pass from the Peloponnese to Attica. Access to Attica by land was hence possible only with the consent of the Megarians. Early on, Megara was embroiled in land disputes with Corinth. Although both states were members of the Peloponnesian League, Megara defected and instead sought the support of Athens, which grabbed the opportunity to intervene. This became one of the factors that led to the First Peloponnesian War.

Athens imposed a democratic regime on Megara that prevented the Spartans and their Peloponnesian allies from accessing Attic land. However, a well-executed Spartan covert operation with the support of dissident Megarian oligarchics massacred the Athenian guard and ultimately turned Megara into an oligarchic state. The Peloponnesian army invaded Attica, but the invasion was unexpectedly cut short. A “Thirty-Years Peace” treaty was ultimately signed, which returned Megara to the Peloponnesian League. Their Athenians were left embittered by the massacre of their guard at Megara and the perceived disrespect of the Megarians.

Subsequently, on the pretext of land disputes with Megara and under the leadership of Pericles, the Athenian ecclesia voted for a “Megarian Degree.” Among other things, the degree was designed to intimidate Megara and other city-states that may have wanted to support Corinth in its campaign against Athens after the events of Corcyra. The degree would ban any Megarian commercial ship from using ports controlled by Athens or its allies. Megarian products were blocked from Athens’ marketplaces. At the time, the Athenian empire extended from Magna Graecia (South Italy) to the Ionian, the Aegean and up to the Black Sea. Athens controlled many strategic ports that other city-states needed for their trade routes in the Mediterranean Sea. Consequently, the economic embargo devastated Megara, which was heavily dependent on trade in agricultural products and pottery. Hardest hit were the oligarchic elites of the city, who controlled much of the commerce.

Sparta’s Reaction

Renowned Yale historian Donald Kagan cites a comedy written in 425 by the great comedian Aristophanes, which is revealing as to the significance of the embargo in the outbreak of the (second) Peloponnesian War. Aristophanes has his comic hero Dicaepolis (which in Greek means fair city) say:

“Pericles in his fury enacted laws that sounded like drinking songs; That the Megarians must leave our lands, our market, our sea and our continent. Then, when the Megarians were slowly starving, they begged the Spartans to get the law of the three harlots withdrawn. We refused, though they asked us often. And from that came the clash of shields.”

Although as Kagan notes this is probably comical exaggeration and a direct attack on Pericles, the leader of Athens, the adverse effects of the embargo remained crucial to persuading the Spartans to go to war, for it highlighted Athens’ asymmetric warfare capabilities and threatened the status quo of Sparta’s alliance in the Peloponnese. While initially the Spartans voted for unconditional war with rising Athens, they eventually backtracked and elected to sent envoys instead, bearing a single demand: “They proclaimed publicly and in the clearest language that there would be no war if the Athenians withdrew the Megarian Decree.”

At the ecclesia – Athens’ marketplace of ideas – Pericles persuaded his fellow citizens to rebuff the Spartan demand on the grounds that Athens was an independent, sovereign city-state. He further argued that under the Thirty-Years Peace treaty, any dispute should be resolved by binding arbitration. Pericles observed that if Athens appeased Sparta under the threat of war then future demands were sure to follow and thus Athens would not be an autonomous city-state but a Spartan protectorate. War ensued.

Japan-China and the Embargo

“Despite the fact that China has become Japan’s largest partner in trade and direct foreign investment, the animosity among nationalists in the two countries is growing and both governments are playing with fire.”

The Wall Street Journal

If current forecasts are to be believed, China is expected to become the biggest economy in the world sometime in the next decade. By 2030, some economists believe, China could be 1.5 times the size of the U.S. economy and more than four times larger than the Japanese economy. According to the gravity model in trade economics, commercial exchange between two countries is dependent on their relative GDPs and the relative distance between them. This means that during peacetime, Japan and China could be expected to be each other’s largest trading partner. Even in 2012, when China’s GDP was still only about half as big again as that of Japan’s, bilateral trade was worth nearly $350 billion per annum. Given the likely widening of their relative GDP gaps to China’s benefit, Japan’s economy will be more dependent on China’s than vice versa. This creates the conditions for a “Megarian trap”; that is, China will have the ability – and thus the temptation – to wreak havoc on the Japanese economy with an economic embargo. Recent history has shown that this could either be a state policy (rare earths) or a public opinion overreaction to bilateral sea disputes (the boycotts in 2012). Already Chinese officials have warned Japan in clear language of a potential third lost decade of economic development.

If China does attempt to coerce Japan economically, Tokyo may well find itself with no alternative but to ask for Washington’s direct intervention. To the disappointment of liberal internationalists, WTO and multilateral organizations would not be able to dissuade China. Moreover, WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism would probably be too slow to alleviate the damage to the Japanese economy. (In the rare earth case it took four years.) The argument Tokyo would present to Washington would be powerful and rational: China, the Japanese side would argue, is breaking norms of the liberal global order that are vital for worldwide economic stability and thus threatens not only Japan’s prosperity but also America’s economic security. The United States would have no choice but to directly intervene and prevail on China to show responsibility and drop any trade embargo or take the necessary steps to protect Japanese investments in China. This would put China in Athens’ position. Would Beijing accept Washington’s lecturing or would it, like Athens, tell Tokyo it must take the case to arbitration (at the WTO)? That is not an easy question to answer, given the likely Chinese public anger at both Japan and the U.S., and the difficulty the authorities would have taming nationalistic resentment. As Thucydides’ history shows, economic embargoes can be seen as an act of war. With its long tradition of commerce with Asia, and in the interests of peace, China would be advised to abstain from using economic coercion to resolve its disputes with Japan.

The triangular relationship among the U.S., China and Japan is the defining dynamic for peace in our time. Certainly, the U.S. must be prepared to live with a rising China. As the scholar Robert Scalapino puts it, the U.S. should deal with problems patiently and with strategic maturity. For its part, China should not let “old hatreds and insults” interrupt its recovery and should stay committed to its commercial engagement with the world. In the question of potestas vs. auctoritas, China should choose the latter and lead by attraction rather than coercion. In that sense, Beijing should solve issues with Japan through arbitration before things reach the nationalistic “street” in Tokyo or Beijing and get out of hand. The treatment of the recent delegation of Japanese businessmen in Beijing could perhaps be seen as a positive first step.

The travails of antiquity offer insights into the strategic maturity that great powers need to resolve disputes peacefully. Great powers should deploy economic warfare with caution, lest it lead to a Megarian trap and another great power conflict – cool, cold or hot. Such an outcome would be catastrophic and must be avoided by all costs. Thucydides warned us that his work was written not “to capture the applause of the moment but to be instead a possession for ever” (ktema es aei) as human nature remains a constant. It would be worth thinking twice before ignoring a warning from the father of political historiography and realpolitik.

Vasilis Trigkas is a research assistant in Sino-EU affairs at the Chairman of Tsinghua University’s Social Sciences department. He is a Non-Resident WSD Handa fellow for the Pacific Forum CSIS, a global shaper for the World Economic Forum and researcher at the ThinkinChina.asia community in Beijing. Views are his own.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

A sad vestige from the Thucydides Trap of yesteryear.

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Russia defence spending facts of the day | FT Alphaville

Russia defence spending facts of the day
Cardiff Garcia Author alerts | Oct 01 09:30

From a summary of Russia’s proposed new budget, by Free Exchange:

The budget shows how much trouble the Russian economy is in—and how unwilling the government is to face up to reality.

It’s an austere affair: 700 billion roubles ($17.8 billion) of previous spending plans have been axed. New taxes on tobacco and alcohol will probably come in. These measures are partly to do with Russia’s poor economic growth, which has crimped tax revenues. …

But among the austerity there are some winners. Mr Putin wants to make good on an electoral promise to hike social spending (say, in the form of higher public-sector wages). Defence, with a 20% rise, is another.According to Julian Cooper, of Birmingham University, this largesse is little to do with the recent Ukraine crisis, but rather part of a long-term plan to modernise the military. Spending on defence will rise by 85% between 2012 and 2017.​

See also The Moscow Times, which further details how even this tighter budget rests on optimistic assumptions of faster growth and lower inflation than are likely.

In the meantime the rouble continues plummeting, reports have cited unidentified sources saying that the Bank of Russia is contemplating capital controls on outflows (since denied), and the price of oil is falling. The economy is flirting with recessionand dealing with 7 per cent inflation, while the severity of the damage from western sanctions remains tough to predict…



Priorities, we guess. Not that military spending can’t help spur a moribund economy in the some circumstances, but in the case of Russia it’s tough to believe that the money can’t be spent much better elsewhere.

For context, in 2012 military spending in Russia as a share of GDP was already about four and a half per cent, roughly equal to the US and much higher than that of other major countries:



Lest we get accused of exaggerating the importance of the above facts for geopolitics outside Russia’s immediate orbit, and to make a screamingly obvious point — yes, of course, the US economy is much bigger Russia’s, about eight times bigger, and Russian defence spending is thus correspondingly smaller.

Here are three charts from the Council on Foreign Relations placing both countries in a global context:

 

[Desertfalcon]

One thing is for certain, in any military conflict between China and the USA, everything China has worked for, all of her economic gains since the 1980's, her prosperity fuelled by trade, would all be wiped out overnight. China's economic engine that has made her rapid advance possible, is due to her export based economy who's top trading partners are, 1. The European Union. 2. The United States of America. 3. Japan. 4. South Korea. In a military conflict between the USA and China, which side do you think those countries will support? Heck, Japan & South Korea, would likely be military participants as allies of America. That is why talk of a war between China and the USA is utter horse crap. It will never happen. The Chinese are just not that stupid.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

The Era of Disorder by Richard N. Haass - Project Syndicate


POLITICS

RICHARD N. HAASS
Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. His most recent book is Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order.

OCT 27, 2014
The Era of Disorder
NEW YORK – Historical eras are difficult to recognize before they end. The Renaissance became the Renaissance only in retrospect; the same can be said for the Dark Ages that preceded it and any number of other eras. The reason is simple: It is impossible to know if some promising or troubling development stands alone or represents the start of a lasting trend.

Nonetheless, I would argue that we are witnessing the end of one era of world history and the dawn of another. It has been 25 years since the Berlin Wall was dismantled, bringing the 40-year Cold War to an end. What followed was an era of American preeminence, increased prosperity for many, the emergence of a large number of relatively open societies and political systems, and widespread peace, including considerable cooperation among the major powers. Now that era, too, has ended, ushering in a far less orderly and peaceful epoch.

The Middle East is in the early phases of a modern-day Thirty Years’ War, in which political and religious loyalties are destined to fuel prolonged and sometimes savage conflicts within and across national borders. With its behavior in Ukraine and elsewhere, Russia has challenged what had been a mostly stable European order founded on the legal principle that territory may not be acquired by military force.

Asia, for its part, has remained mostly at peace. But it is a precarious peace, one that could come undone at any moment, owing to a large number of unresolved territorial claims, rising nationalism, and a paucity of bilateral or regional diplomatic arrangements robust enough to prevent or moderate confrontations. Meanwhile, global efforts to slow climate change, promote trade, set new rules for the digital age, and prevent or contain outbreaks of infectious diseases are inadequate.

Some of the reasons why this is happening reflect fundamental changes in the world, including the diffusion of power to an increasing number of states and non-state actors, ranging from terrorist organizations and militias to corporations and NGOs. Managing greenhouse-gas emissions and global flows of drugs, arms, terrorists, and pathogens would be no easy task under the best of circumstances; it is made more difficult by a lack of consensus on what to do and a lack of will to act even when agreement exists.

Other reasons for growing global disorder have to do with the United States. The 2003 Iraq War exacerbated Sunni-Shia tensions and removed a critical barrier to Iranian ambitions. More recently, the US called for regime change in Syria, but then did little to bring it about, even after government forces, ignoring American warnings, repeatedly used chemical weapons. What emerged in the region was a vacuum filled by the Islamic State. In Asia, the US articulated a new policy of heightened involvement (the so-called strategic “pivot” to the region), but then did little to make it a reality.

The consequence of these and other episodes has been the emergence of widespread doubt about US credibility and reliability. As a result, a growing number of governments and others have begun to act independently.

There are also local explanations for growing global instability. The Middle East suffers from too much intolerance and too little accord about either the boundaries between government and society or the role of religion within them. Meanwhile, countries in and near the region are doing little to prevent the rise of extremism or contend with it when and where it emerges.

Russia under Vladimir Putin seems determined to use intimidation and force to restore lost parts of its empire. Europe increasingly lacks the means and the mindset to play a significant global role. Too many Asian governments are tolerating or encouraging nationalism rather than preparing their populations for difficult but necessary compromises with neighbors.

This is not to argue that we are in for a new Dark Ages. Interdependence acts as a brake on what governments can do without hurting themselves. The world economy has recovered somewhat from its nadir six years ago. Europe is mostly stable, as is Latin America and an increasing share of Africa.

There is also the possibility of pushing back against the new disorder. International negotiations might produce an outcome that would leave Iran sufficiently short of a nuclear-weapons capability that its neighbors would not feel the need to attack it or develop such weapons of their own. Steps can be taken to weaken the Islamic State militarily, reduce the flows of recruits and dollars to it, and shore up some of its potential targets. Sanctions and lower oil prices might lead Russia to accept compromise on Ukraine. Asian governments could still opt for regional arrangements that would buttress peace.

But what can be accomplished is likely to be limited by countries’ domestic politics, the absence of international consensus, and the waning of US influence, which no other country is able to replace and few are willing even to support in promoting order. The result is a world less at peace, less prosperous, and less adept at meeting the challenges it faces than it was in the post-Cold War era.

This commentary is adapted from a longer article appearing in the November/December 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs.

The Era of Disorder by Richard N. Haass - Project Syndicate


Read more at The Era of Disorder by Richard N. Haass - Project Syndicate

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

Overcoming ‘Abnormal Normality’ in the US-China Relationship | The Diplomat

Overcoming 'Abnormal Normality' in the US-China Relationship
Implemented properly, a “new type of great power relations” could help the U.S. and China reframe their relationship.

By Jin Kai
October 30, 2014

The China-U.S. relationship is undoubtedly one of the most important and unique bilateral relationships in contemporary world politics. Hence, any change or even fine tuning of the Sino-U.S. relationship can result in substantial consequences for nearby countries or even the world. The importance of this relationship comes from the size of these two great powers, as well as their political influence, economic power, and military capacity.

The uniqueness of the China-U.S. relationship primarily comes from the differences that exist between China and the U.S. in almost all aspects. Regarding these differences, especially when it comes political ideology and values, China’s position has been very clear: “seek common ground while reserving differences.” However, the U.S. remains keen to use its still dominant leadership role in world politics to promote so-called universal values or principles such as Western-style democracy. This cognitive divergence is a fundamental cause for the lack of trust and thus the antagonism between these two great powers, a situation which can be described as “abnormal normality.”

When it comes to U.S.-China relations on a global scale, there are three main possibilities for the future. First, China could refuse to completely join and merge into the U.S.-led system, instead trying to create a new regional or even global system. Second, China could merge entirely into the dominant system and passively adopt U.S. leadership. Third, China could join the U.S.-led world system but take the initiative to change and reform the system until China seizes leadership from the inside.

At this point, it’s not clear what scenario is the most likely to play out. Without keeping an open-minded attitude and approach, and more importantly continuously seeking and consolidating consensus on various issues (especially trans-national problems), Sino-U.S. relations will go through a long and exhausting period full of ambiguity and uncertainty. Against this backdrop, China’s suggestion of constructing a “new type of great power relations” is an unprecedented attempt to break out of the framework of conventional theories and stereotypes in world politics.

When defining “new type,” the key point is to go beyond assumptions about the doomed fate of great powers. With the help of subjective analysis of the contemporary world situation, we can come to different conclusions than those suggested by historical empiricism. There are two critically important factors to support the possibility of a “new type” of relationship: a changing understanding of power (including soft power) and the challenges brought by global and cross-border issues. Both these factors show us that national interests can be secured and realized through bilateral and multilateral negotiation and cooperation, in spite of political and ideological differences. This is the only way for China and the U.S. to escape the historical precedent of hard confrontation.

What’s more, the above two factors have been reinforced by another equally important variable: China’s expanding economic power. Put together, the three factors have created a background for these two competing great powers that is quite different from previous historical scenarios.

There remains a serious problem, however. To some extent, the U.S. regards China’s suggestion of constructing a “new type of great power relations” as China’s way of evading its competition with the United States. Some in the U.S. believe that Beijing has put forward this proposal as a defensive tactic, a way of counteracting pressure from the U.S. at a time when China still does not have the upper hand. Hence, without a more comprehensive and solid consensus on the true intention and strategic goals of constructing new type of great power relations, this proposal could become just another source for distrust between China and the United States.

 

[Aepsilons]

One thing is for certain, in any military conflict between China and the USA, everything China has worked for, all of her economic gains since the 1980's, her prosperity fuelled by trade, would all be wiped out overnight. China's economic engine that has made her rapid advance possible, is due to her export based economy who's top trading partners are, 1. The European Union. 2. The United States of America. 3. Japan. 4. South Korea. In a military conflict between the USA and China, which side do you think those countries will support? Heck, Japan & South Korea, would likely be military participants as allies of America. That is why talk of a war between China and the USA is utter horse crap. It will never happen. The Chinese are just not that stupid.

We can only hope, Sir.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

The U.S. Should Not Fear Competing With China | The Diplomat

The U.S. Should Not Fear Competing With China
With the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the U.S. should not be afraid of a little healthy competition.

By Amitai Etzioni
October 30, 2014

On October 24, 21 Asian nations signed a memorandum to form a new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, to be drawn on considerable Chinese funds. Behind the scenes, Washington had been trying to discourage South Korea and Australia from accepting a Chinese invitation to be among the founders. The effort was successful.

U.S. opposition to the new bank illuminates a much greater issue: Will the U.S. seek to contain every international initiative by China, or will it only counter aggression but welcome China’s non-coercive engagement in regional and world affairs? Some students of international relations expect that China will buy into the existing international order – the one formed and promoted by the United States – at least until China develops much more. Under this reasoning, the United States should therefore welcome China’s increased contributions to various international bodies, something the U.S. has long been seeking. Others, however, point out that the United States is instead increasingly of the view that China is seeking to form its own world order, which is leading the United States to labor to block such initiatives. One can see these blocking moves when China moves to expand its EEZ, boost its investments in Africa and in Latin America, or set up a new Asian development bank.

These analyses assume that rising powers must either accept the prevailing order as it is, or must set out to form a new order of their own. However, the prevailing world order is not etched in stone; it is continuously modified. There is no a priori reason to assume that rising powers must either buy into the order “as is” or reject it in toto. The world order can be, and most likely will have to be, renegotiated and recast, one hopes in ways that will work for both the new and old powers. An attitude of “my way or the highway” invites conflict; mutually beneficial third ways should be considered.

What I call, lacking a better term, the “redder red and greener green” option represents such a third way forward. It holds that the United States (and China) should strongly oppose any and all attempts to change the status quo by use of force. This is the red light part: strongly opposing changing borders and resolving territorial disputes by force, whether force is used in the Asia-Pacific region or in the Middle East or elsewhere. In effect, U.S. President Barack Obama followed this approach with regard to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands when he stated that the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan extends to the islands. Since then, China has done precious little to gain control of them. (And after engaging in coercive regime change in Iraq and Libya, which evoked the ire of Russia and China, the Obama administration has been much more circumspect in its drive to remove Assad’s regime by the use of force.)

At the same time, the United States should flush a much greener welcoming light to non-coercive moves by China (and China, to such American overtures). The United States has no reason to fear competing with China in the realms of economics and ideas. For some time, several Western observers seem gravely concerned that developing nations would be so taken with the success of China’s authoritarian capitalism, and troubled by the post-2007 difficulties of Western democratic capitalism, that they would emulate China’s political-economic model. Stephen Halper’s The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century articulated this concern. Actually developing nations each follow a complicated path influenced by many local and regional factors, and there are no signs that these countries are rushing to embrace the Chinese model. At any rate, increasing United States efforts to put its own economic and political house in order will surely be much more effective at maintaining the United States’ status as a superpower and respect in the eyes of developing nations than blocking Chinese development initiatives.

Moreover, the United States should know by now that few countries kowtow to those that grant them aid or to whom they should feel they owe a sense of gratitude. China is currently discovering that the countries in which it has invested often resent the fact that Chinese companies bring their own workers, pay low wages to local laborers, and discourage mingling between Chinese and local employees – all complaints directed at the West in the past.

As to the specifics of the new bank, the United States should welcome it, especially if it truly would challenge the West-dominated World Bank to a competition over which bank can furnish aid under the best terms and provide sounder advice. Despite several attempts at reform, the World Bank’s performance, by the bank’s own account, is inadequate to put it mildly. And as far as the U.S. is concerned, it surely should find it difficult to justify seeking to curb competition (by blocking the entry of a new bank into the market), given that competition is a core element of free economies. Instead, the U.S. could better “step up its game” and “win” by providing more compelling development policies, more investment and credits, and maybe more foreign aid. (Takehiko Nakao, the president of the Asian Development Bank, softens the issue by stressing that the new bank will focus on investments in infrastructure while the World Bank focuses on poverty reduction.)

In short, the rise of a new power calls for characterizing some acts as particularly objectionable, the coercive ones, and seeking to block them, while viewing other new initiatives as fully legitimate and constructive. This dual approach of combining some containment with some new openness in effect means that the world order itself will need to be recast. It will have to be more ready to negotiate changes in the rules as long as rising powers respect the Westphalian norm, that is the sovereignty of nations, and the commitment to work out differences about borders and territorial rights in peaceful ways.

Amitai Etzioni is a University Professor at The George Washington University and author of the newly released book The New Normal: Finding a Balance between Individual Rights and the Common Good.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

For those of us less familiar with the border conflict between India and China, this is WSJ reporting at its finest. In the discussion of a Thucydidean Trap, it is interesting to note the parallel that is playing out between India and China.

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http://online.wsj.com/articles/indi...1912131382502414519004580246052253464986.html

India-China Border Standoff: High in the Mountains, Thousands of Troops Go Toe-to-Toe
Biggest Border Clashes in Decades a Sign of Growing Friction Between World’s Most-Populous Countries

Friction along India’s long and disputed border with China has sparked a road-building effort to make it easier for the Indian army to move troops and equipment to contested areas. WSJ's Gordon Fairclough reports.

By
GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
Oct. 30, 2014 5:30 p.m. ET

KORZOK, India—It was dusk when the herdsmen reached their Himalayan village bearing ominous news: They had spotted dozens of camouflage-clad Chinese soldiers inside territory India considers its own.

Indian security forces poured in, beginning a face-off last month that grew to involve more than 1,000 troops on each side at an altitude of roughly 15,000 feet, according to Indian officials, making it the biggest border confrontation between the two nations in decades.

The mountain standoff lasted weeks and at times involved tense shoving-and-shouting matches, according to Indian border-patrol troopers who participated. Both armies called in helicopters. The scale and duration of the clash are signs of mounting friction between the world’s two most-populous countries.

“The Chinese have become more aggressive,” said Jayadeva Ranadé, a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board. “They were trying to send a message that they can pressure us at a time and place of their choosing.”

ENLARGE
Beijing says its forces didn’t cross the “line of actual control”—a boundary that has separated the two sides since a 1962 border war and whose exact location remains a subject of bitter dispute—and played down the encounter’s significance.

Without a clearly demarcated border, “it is quite natural for some incidents to happen,” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Geng Yansheng said afterward at a news briefing in Beijing.

(Subscriber exclusive: read a Q&A with experts on the India-China border dispute)

Locals were caught in the middle. “Everybody was worried and asking if we should stay or go,” said Gyaltsan Tsering, the headman of Chumar, a village near the standoff. “We were afraid hostilities would break out.”

Much of the global attention paid to China’s territorial assertiveness has focused on maritime conflicts in the East China Sea and the South China Sea that have stoked tensions with Japan, the U.S. and some Southeast Asian nations.

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An aerial view of the Himalayas near Leh in Ladakh, India.
But China is also making a less-noticed push in the west to enforce claims along its 2,200-mile (3,400-kilometer) frontier with India. India says the number of what it describes as Chinese “transgressions” across the two countries’ ill-defined boundary has climbed sharply—to more than 400 last year from 213 in 2011.

At times the disputes have revolved around issues as minor as the location of a hut to shelter herders. Many details of the most-recent standoff, based on Wall Street Journal interviews near where the incident occurred, haven’t previously been reported.

China’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to questions about India’s figures and declined to say if Indian troops cross into the Chinese side. Both countries say their forces don’t leave what they consider to be their own territory.

India’s new government has pledged a tougher foreign-policy stance. Last week, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said India would build 54 new outposts along the eastern section of the India-China border and invest $28.5 million in other infrastructure to catch up with construction on the Chinese side.

ENLARGE
(Subscriber exclusive: read more on the expansion of roads and other infrastructure in India-China border areas)

Although New Delhi wants to resolve boundary disputes through dialogue, “peace cannot come at the cost of honor,” he said.

On Thursday, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry, Yang Yujun, reacted, saying: “We hope the Indian side can strive to uphold peace and calm in the border region, and not take any actions that complicate the situation.”

The long-running quarrel hasn’t involved armed conflict in recent years and both sides say they are determined to keep the peace. But analysts say more encounters between the two sides’ armed forces raise the risk of accidental escalation.

Defense analysts attribute the increasing tensions in part to the fact that both sides have built roads and other infrastructure that ease the movement of troops and supplies, despite the border areas’ inhospitable geography.

China has also shown greater willingness to press its territorial claims and show its displeasure with its neighbors as its economic and military power has increased.

ENLARGE
The two countries have long harbored strategic misgivings about each other. India resents China’s close relations with rival Pakistan and its growing influence with India’s other neighbors. China says its interests in the region are commercial, not military.

For its part, Beijing is wary of the emergence of a strategic partnership among India, the U.S. and Japan, which some in Beijing see as aimed at hindering China’s rise. India’s decision to let the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama use the country as a base also rankles with China.

While Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants Chinese investment to help revive India’s economy, he hasn’t shied away from steps that could anger Beijing. On Tuesday, India said it would sell navy vessels to Vietnam, which has its own territorial feud with China, after earlier signing an energy-exploration deal with Hanoi.

Today’s border situation has its roots in the fact that for centuries, the sparsely inhabited belt of mountains between what are now India and China existed as a sort of buffer zone between empires. Since a brief 1962 border war between the countries that left several thousand soldiers dead or missing, tension has waxed and waned.

China asserts claims on India’s Arunachal Pradesh state, while India claims a region it calls Aksai Chin that connects Tibet with Xinjiang in northwest China. More than a dozen rounds of talks since 2003 haven’t made much visible progress toward a settlement.

Now, local leaders from Indian border areas say they believe China is making a creeping advance, in some cases forcing herders off traditional grazing grounds. Assessing the situation on China’s side is more difficult, because China limits the access of foreign journalists to militarily sensitive border areas.

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Gurmet Dorjay, a member of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council.JUNHO KIM FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Chinese troops “come some meters, or a kilometer, at a time,” said Gurmet Dorjay, a member of India’s Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council. “Our side doesn’t push back. That’s how you lose ownership.”

Kiren Rijiju, a minister of state in India’s Home Ministry, said Mr. Modi’s government would “respond appropriately” to incursions.

Villages like Chumar in the arid, high-altitude region of Ladakh, part of India’s northern Jammu and Kashmir state, are on the front line.

A settlement of stone and whitewashed, mud-brick houses and corrals for livestock, Chumar is home to about 35 families who eke out a living raising goats, sheep and other animals. They earn money selling cashmere wool.

ENLARGE
The monastery at Chumar.
People speak a Tibetan language similar to that spoken across the border in China and practice Tibetan Buddhism. Prayer flags flutter over the village and locals worship at a nearby monastery.

Residents say they are Indian citizens and would leave if the area falls under the control of Chinese authorities, whom they view as hostile to their religion and ways of living.

Locals used to have little contact with China’s military, said Mr. Tsering, the headman, who is his 40s. That changed in recent years, he said.

Chinese soldiers on horseback entered areas around Chumar multiple times in the summer of 2013, locals said. This spring, Mr. Tsering and other local leaders said, several herdsmen from Chumar were attacked by about a dozen mounted Chinese soldiers.

The soldiers beat them with whips in an area near a group of generations-old Buddhist monuments, said Messrs. Tsering and Dorjay. “Nobody’s been challenging them, so they just keep coming,” said Mr. Tsering.

China’s Defense Ministry declined to comment.

Then came the September standoff, ahead of a visit to India by Chinese President Xi Jinping .

Indian security forces discovered Chinese soldiers using heavy earth-moving equipment to build a dirt road into territory India considers its own. Dozens of Chinese soldiers also took up positions at an area of high ground known to India’s military as 30R, near Chumar.

India has long considered 30R to be on its side of the line of actual control and Indian forces use it to monitor Chinese operations.

ENLARGE
The Indo-Tibetan Border Police post at Chumar.
Convoys of olive-drab troop trucks rushed in Indian reinforcements and China sent in more troops. Forces—for the most part armed with assault rifles and pistols—at times pushed, shoved and shouted at each other, participants said.

“This is the biggest confrontation I’ve ever seen,” said one veteran Indo-Tibetan Border Police officer, who declined to be named. “It’s obvious they want to come farther.”

Chinese officers showed maps to their Indian counterparts indicating that the 30R hill and Buddhist stupas closer to the Chumar monastery were in Chinese territory, the officer said.

“That is a new claim. Next year they’ll be back with a map that moves the border even further,” he said. “They keep changing the maps and intruding again and again.”

Ma Jiali, an India watcher at the China Reform Forum, a think tank affiliated with the Communist Party’s Central Party School, said India’s construction of outposts around Chumar, where India’s army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police have bases, had forced China’s hand.

“China didn’t provoke the latest standoff,” Mr. Ma said. He blamed India for “creating a new point of contention and forcing the Chinese side into taking action to defend its position.”

A few years ago, India built a paved road to the Chumar area and an observation tower. During the standoff, China also objected to what Indian officials described as a hut, erected to shelter patrols, that India says is within its territory. The Chinese in the past have also objected to a shelter for herders near another village.

ENLARGE
The ITBP observation tower near Chumar.
It took several rounds of talks between military commanders and a meeting of the countries’ foreign ministers before the two sides pulled back.

Such face-offs could become more common as India moves to close the gap with China in terms of border roads and infrastructure. China has made big investments in border regions and connected Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, to the country’s east coast by rail.

India is making its own infrastructure push. In the Ladakh region in late September, crews were blasting away the side of a mountain to widen a road to border areas and doing other construction work. The military has started using airfields near contested border areas to spotlight its ability to airlift reinforcements.

“India is trying to catch up,” said C. Raja Mohan, a foreign-policy specialist at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “Both militaries are now operating much closer to the border. That could mean more incidents and more intense incidents.”

—Chun Han Wong in Beijing contributed to this article.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

How China Sees America's Moves in Asia: Worse Than Containment | The National Interest

How China Sees America's Moves in Asia: Worse Than Containment

"For American strategists, the realization that rivalry discourse has become conventional wisdom and even modish in China may prompt some due self-reflection."

Lyle J. Goldstein
October 29, 2014

Editor’s Note: The following is part three of a new occasional series named “Dragon Eye” which seeks insight and analysis from Chinese writings on world affairs. Part one of the series, “What Does China Really Think About the Ukraine Crisis?” can be found here. Part two of the series, “The World’s Most Dangerous Rivalry: China and Japan” can be found here.

As President Obama prepares to embark once more on a trip to the Middle Kingdom, it will be worthwhile to reflect on the condition of this all-important bilateral relationship. Specialists and senior diplomats are fond of discussing the tremendous breadth of U.S.-Chinese interactions, most of which are not in the military sphere and are generally positive. This is, needless to say, the most massive trading relationship on the globe, after all. Then, there are American NBA teams playing exhibition games in China and getting plenty of attention from an adoring Chinese fan base. Less glamorous, but likely of much greater significance is the very extensive set of scientific collaborations that has been initiated in the domain of green energy.

And yet, we should all be amply disturbed by the obviously unstable military competition now coming into full view in U.S.-Chinese relations. It’s all well and good to describe the relations as having cooperative and competitive dynamics—akin to a couple of scrappy boys on the playground, right? Wrong. As these two “chums” are playing the “game” of geopolitics, one of them could easily brandish a switch-blade with untold consequences for international security. As the Ukraine crisis starkly revealed earlier this year, international politics is not a playground.

Putting U.S.-Chinese relations on a stronger foundation—a conspicuous failure of the current administration’s foreign policy—will require a more thorough understanding of Chinese strategy and especially perceptions. This is not a matter of more dialogue, or of closely reading China’s defense white paper. Nor is the anodyne and ambiguous terminology employed by diplomats particularly helpful. Understanding the perceptions of Chinese national-security elites requires a frequent “look under the hood” of U.S.-Chinese relations.

Here, a single, representative Chinese academic article is discussed in detail for its utility in gauging the state of contemporary U.S.-Chinese relations. The article entitled “On the U.S. Restriction of Chinese Sea Power in the Post-Cold War Era” was published as the lead article in the summer 2014 edition of the journal 东北亚论坛 [Northeast Asia Forum]. This is hardly China’s most significant foreign-policy publication, and its authors cannot be counted among Beijing’s foreign-policy elite.

And yet that may suggest its potential to cut through the cloud of opaque argumentation that often envelops the Chinese capital. Two of the three writers are from prominent military academies (army and air force), while the third is a researcher at the prestigious Zhejiang University. As the lead article in the journal, it must be assumed that the editorial staff regarded the article as innovative and significant, suggesting even that these authors could be representative of China’s future national-security decision makers.

The authors argue that the United States has become the most significant factor restricting the further development of Chinese sea power. They explain that sea power is at the core of American grand strategy and that China’s rapid rise is perceived in Washington to threaten the U.S. position of hegemonic leadership in the Western Pacific. These perceptions have given rise to “doubts and wariness” regarding China’s naval development.

For these authors, China does not just confront “遏制” [containment] by the United States, but something perhaps even more bellicose: “围堵”[a condition of being under siege] or even “掣肘”[a condition of being held by the elbows]. For the purpose of restricting Chinese naval power in the eastern, southern and western flanks, Washington is said to be constructing a “超长防线”[super long line of defense] that stretches from the Aleutian Islands to the Persian Gulf.

As noted above, this analysis puts a focus on three different vectors of U.S. activity. In the South China Sea, it is observed that over the last few years, the United States has begun to “directly contain” Chinese sea-power development. In that regard, the recent deployment of the new littoral combat ship (LCS) to Singapore is seen as deliberately aimed at countering China. These analysts outline the importance of Washington’s so-called “双锚”[dual anchor] strategy that seeks to facilitate enhanced military cooperation between Australia and Japan. Another vector of U.S. strategy, according to this analysis, concerns Taiwan. The island is said to form a critical strategic linkage to the South China Sea and its role in U.S. strategy is said to be increasing.

The final vector of U.S. policy is said to concern the Indian Ocean and involves an effort by Washington to strengthen the Indian armed forces. The idea, according to these Chinese analysts, is to use the India-China territorial dispute on land to “牵制 ” [pin down] China by diverting its attention away from the maritime flank. The authors assert that China faces an immense challenge to develop as a “陆海复合型国家” [hybrid land-sea power]. They note that many great powers—including France, Germany and the Soviet Union—faced similar challenges as hybrid powers, and each ultimately met defeat.

Another interesting part of the article examines how China should respond to alleged U.S. efforts to contain the development of Chinese sea power. Owing to historical reasons and resource limitations, China’s fleet is said to have been excessively reliant on submarines and small surface ships, neglecting large combatants. A more balanced fleet, employing aircraft carriers, will be capable of “突破” [breaking through] American restrictions on Chinese sea power to “uphold Asia-Pacific maritime strategic stability.” To American readers, of course, these two goals will seem to be in direct contradiction, but this bald Chinese assertion just illustrates the glaringly deep chasm that separates strategic perceptions across the Pacific. It is also interesting, moreover, that none of the authors are from the Chinese Navy—one is a civilian, one is from the Chinese Army and one is from the Chinese Air Force. Apparently, navalism has gone mainstream in China—not necessarily a positive sign for the future of security in the Asia-Pacific. If there is one ray of sunlight in this otherwise dark discussion, it is a brief suggestion that China must provide the Asia-Pacific with “maritime public goods,” to enhance regional stability and also to allay American doubts. But the overall tone is overwhelmingly pessimistic.

Two other points are noteworthy in this article from the vantage point of military strategy. First, the authors’ rather candid appraisal notes that the Chinese Navy remains significantly weak in anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Increasing the Chinese Navy’s proficiency at ASW is said to be “迫在眉睫” [extremely urgent]. However, they go on to observe that submarines have almost no answer to aerial attack, so the implication seems to be that China will double down on vectoring substantial, if unrealized, air-power potential (to include patrol aircraft, carrier aviation, helicopters and UAVs) against the perceived grave submarine threat. On a military subject of potentially even greater importance, these authors assert that Chinese nuclear forces are far too small at present. The nuclear balance, they argue, is an essential pillar of stability in the Asia-Pacific region, and they strongly argue in favor of further enhancing China’s sea-based deterrent.

This article may serve as evidence of the pervasiveness of a rivalry mentality in Chinese strategic discourse. There is hardly a whiff of optimism, such as references to “new type great power relations,” let alone “peaceful development” in this article. As the lead article by young national-security thinkers in a journal of middling prestige, it may represent the views of a wider swathe of Chinese foreign-policy thinkers—not just the Beijing and Shanghai elite. On the other hand, it is hardly difficult to find articles in more elite fora, such as a mid-2014 article in 世界经济与政治 [World Economy and Politics] by Peking University professor Hu Bo, who sees the U.S.-Chinese rivalry “expanding to all of the Asia Pacific,” and that both sides are pursuing “针锋相对” [tit-for-tat] strategies in the military domain.

For American strategists, the realization that rivalry discourse has become conventional wisdom and even modish in China may prompt some due self-reflection. Perhaps ad nauseam bellicose articles and Washington think-tank analyses reflecting on the putative Chinese challenge and advocating for strengthening the pivot have now poisoned this ultra delicate relationship to a high degree. Are U.S.-Chinese relations in a good place if typical international-relations journals in China are running lead articles advocating for enhanced ASW and nuclear forces as the primary means to counter U.S. strategy?

The two most important countries in the world should be talking primarily about climate change, joint management of the volatile Korean Peninsula and Persian Gulf regions, and especially the Ebola crisis, wherein intensive and large scale U.S.-China military cooperative assistance could make a huge difference. But the sad state of present day U.S.-Chinese relations means the leaders and senior diplomatic delegations are instead most likely at the November meetings in Beijing to squander limited bandwidth trading slurs over the fate of inconsequential reefs (and related patrol activities).

Lyle J. Goldstein is Associate Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. The opinions expressed in this analysis are his own and do not represent the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. Government.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

Engagement and Assurance: Debating the U.S.-Chinese Relationship | The National Interest

Engagement and Assurance: Debating the U.S.-Chinese Relationship

A response to Lyle Goldstein's "How China Sees America’s Moves in Asia."

Michael S. ChaseTimothy R. HeathEly Ratner
November 5, 2014

In “How China Sees America’s Moves in Asia,” Professor Lyle Goldsteinhighlights the disturbing conclusion of a recent essay by three Chinese analysts: China is under siege, pinned down by a U.S. strategy of “containment” that aims to encircle their country and undermine its security interests.

Professor Goldstein is right to point out that concerns about U.S. "containment" are pervasive in Chinese foreign policy and national-security assessments, and that this is a fear the United States cannot ignore as it strengthens its focus on Asia. Professor Goldstein’s article is also an important reminder that to be successful, a strategy of deterrence requires a corresponding message of assurance. Security-studies scholars and military strategists have long recognized that deterrence and assurance are two sides of the same coin, and that some level of assurance is required to encourage a potential adversary to exercise restraint.

Yet we disagree in important ways with three aspects of Professor Goldstein’s argument. First, his assessment gives far too much weight to a single assessment published in a relatively minor Chinese journal, one that appears to go well beyond more mainstream discussions among PLA and foreign-policy specialists about the challenges associated with what many in China view as U.S. "containment.”

Second, his article obscures the most dangerous dynamics in Asia by overstating the destabilizing nature of U.S. policy and ignoring the region-wide and deleterious effects of Chinese assertiveness.

And third, he mischaracterizes U.S. policy by assuming that differences on maritime disputes are dominating America’s agenda with China and crowding out political bandwidth and will to cooperate on issues of common concern.

We address these issues in turn.

It is clear that many Chinese analysts see the "rebalance" as highly threatening, but this is a minority view compared to authoritative Chinese sources that tend to carry more balanced assessments. Chinese publications by analysts affiliated with official institutions like the PLA’s Academy of Military Science (AMS) and National Defense University (NDU), think tanks linked to other parts of the Chinese government like the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), and the Central Party School reveal deep wariness about America’s Asia policy, but also suggest that Beijing believes it can work with Washington to manage the associated challenges.

More disturbing than Professor Goldstein’s sourcing, however, is his diagnosis of the cause of U.S.-PRC friction. Washington think-tank assessments of PLA modernization and Chinese coercive diplomacy are not "poisoning" the U.S.-Chinese relationship. Instead, the principal factor undermining regional stability is China’s more assertive behavior toward its neighbors, not the actions of the United States, its allies, or other countries in Asia. While tensions between China and U.S. allies like Japan and the Philippines have dominated the headlines, a growing list of countries—to include non-U.S. allies such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia—have expressed alarm at Chinese behavior and are responding accordingly by modernizing their militaries and building stronger security partnerships with the United States and each other.

Professor Goldstein’s article then prescribes a dangerous policy of retrenchment that would only serve to aggravate the risks of crisis and conflict. After all, the most dangerous rivalries in Asia today are between China and its neighbors, not China and the United States. A disengaged or acquiescent Washington would only intensify fears and insecurity in regional capitals and increase the likelihood of arms racing, miscalculation and violence. The logic of the rebalance is precisely to avoid this outcome by at once seeking to build stable ties with China while reassuring U.S. allies and partners.

Finally, Professor Goldstein concludes by warning that Washington is “most likely at the November meetings in Beijing to squander limited bandwidth trading slurs over the fate of inconsequential reefs.” This would be worrisome were it not for the fact that it’s inaccurate. In fact, consistent with the approach that Goldstein himself advocates, high-level U.S. officials have been engaging in shuttle diplomacy with their Chinese counterparts over the last several months to advance U.S.-Chinese cooperation on issues ranging from climate change and Ebola to ISIS and Afghanistan. As a result, the upcoming meetings are much more likely to focus on efforts to both enhance practical areas of collaboration and better manage areas of difference.

In the final analysis, we agree that U.S. analysts should pay attention to the full range of debates on foreign and defense policy in China, but we should not overemphasize the views at the far end of the spectrum—still less should we let these views dictate U.S. policy. Professor Goldstein is right that the risks of strategic rivalry are worthy of serious attention, but the best way to avoid the destabilizing effects of military competition is sustained U.S. engagement with China and the region—precisely what U.S. policy has been seeking to achieve.

Michael S. Chase is a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and an Adjunct Professor of China Studies and Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Timothy R. Heath is a Senior International Defense Research Analyst at the RAND Corporation.

Ely Ratner is Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

I will probably start winding down the "Road to War" series, since it doesn't seem like a good fit for PDF. I will possibly continue it elsewhere.

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Kerry: US-China Ties ‘Most Consequential in the World’ | The Diplomat

Kerry: US-China Ties ‘Most Consequential in the World’
Before heading to Beijing, John Kerry said U.S.-China relations are the most consequential in the world. Period.

By Zachary Keck
November 05, 2014

The U.S. and China relationship is the most consequential in the world today, period, Secretary of State John Kerry said during a speech in Washington, DC on Tuesday.

“The U.S.-China relationship is the most consequential in the world today, period, and it will do much to determine the shape of the 21st century.” Kerry said during a speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Kerry said that strengthening U.S.-China relations is a key component of the United States’ rebalance to Asia, “because a stronger relationship between our two nations will benefit not just the United States and China, not just the Asia Pacific, but the world.”

Kerry told the audience that America’s China policy is built on the twin pillars of “constructively managing our differences” and “just as constructively” cooperating on issues of mutual interest. With regards to issues in which the U.S. and China manage their differences, Kerry explicitly mentioned regional maritime security in Asia, cyber issues and human rights. On maritime disputes, Kerry said that the U.S. and China “do not simply agree to disagree when it comes to maritime security, especially in the South and East China Seas.” Instead, the U.S. consistently urges all parties to pursue their claims in accordance with international law and with restraint. He also reiterated that the U.S. hoped the claimants in the South China Sea dispute would sign a code of conduct.

On cyber issues, Kerry reiterated that the U.S. opposes “cyber-enabled theft of trade secrets” and strongly believes it is in “China’s interest to help put an end to this practice.” Beijing has consistently denied that it is engaged in economic cyber theft, while also denying that there is a distinction between what the U.S. deems legitimate cyber espionage– which is directed at state targets– and illegitimate cyber espionage aimed at acquiring trade advantages. The Obama administration has indicated that the U.S. president intends to raise the cyber issue with President Xi at their meeting later this month. However, China’s top diplomat told Kerry last week that resuming a cyber dialogue is difficult for Beijing because of “mistaken U.S. practices,” likely a reference to both the Edward Snowden leaks and the White House’s decision to bring charges against Chinese military hackers.

On the other hand, Kerry listed economics, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Ebola as areas of potential cooperation between the United States and China. He spent the greatest amount of time, however, discussing how the U.S. and China could cooperate on climate change issues. Since becoming secretary of state, Kerry has made climate change a central component of his engagement with China and Asia more generally. Given Chinese leaders own growing concern about the environment, this is indeed one area where Xi and Obama are likely to produce some deliverables next week.

Kerry made the speech on Tuesday immediately prior to departing for a trip abroad that will include two trips to China. Following a brief stop in Paris, Kerry will be Beijing on Friday and Saturday this week to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Ministerial Meeting (AMM). He will then travel to Oman to meet with the Iranian foreign minister, before returning to Beijing early next week to accompany President Barack Obama at the APEC leaders summit and the bilateral summit between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.