— transforming rocks and reefs into artificial islands with runways and radars — has driven already close US allies more tightly into the American embrace.
Even old adversaries, like Vietnam, now discuss the possibility of welcoming American naval visits to Cam Ranh Bay. The two countries have also agreed to expand defence trade and joint military operations. Meanwhile, American troops are due to rotate through the Philippines’ military bases — a colony that banished the US Navy from Subic Bay nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Yet as these countries inch closer to Washington, they also express doubts over America’s staying power in Asia. And while they deliver forceful rhetorical rebuttals of Chinese activities in the South China Sea, not one US ally has decided to follow Washington in conducting a freedom of navigation exercise within the 12 nautical mile zone around these territories.
Into this already febrile strategic environment has come a second, no less turbulent force: the decades’ old spectre of a US withdrawal from Asia. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has expressed a desire to virtually overturn America’s postwar regional ‘hub and spokes’ alliance system.
In interviews with the Washington Post and the New York Times, Trump spoke about his willingness to reconsider America’s alliances with both Japan and South Korea if they did not increase their financial contributions to the cost of feeding and housing US troops stationed there. He foreshadowed not only a complete drawdown of these garrisons but even suggested that both Seoul and Tokyo also consider developing their own nuclear weapons.
These events have caused significant doubts about both China’s long term intentions and the future of the US ‘pivot’ to Asia.
In the case of the South China Sea, Washington’s allies face a dilemma. Nervous about Beijing’s attempts to skim influence from the United States in the region, many are eager to see a reaffirmation of American commitment to Asian security. But few are ready to do anything to oppose Chinese adventurism, taking only to the microphone — or in the case of the Philippines the international court of arbitration — rather than the high seas. There can be no doubt that US officials are disappointed at the distinct lack of preparedness on the part of regional allies to be more assertive in challenging China’s claims.
Among commentators in Japan there is broad agreement that a freedom of navigation patrol is not the litmus test for alliance unity in Asia. They stress that Japan’s contribution to regional peace lies in strengthening maritime capabilities, not being a naval loudmouth. Distinguished analyst Funabashi Yoichi has cited domestic pressures that might limit Japan’s ability ‘to live up to its expanded commitments’. There is a ‘real risk’, he adds, ‘that expectation gaps could develop as a permanent feature of America’s relationships with its allies’.
While most official regional reactions to Trump’s remarks have been muted, some have not held back. A major South Korean newspaper described his views as ‘shocking’, since they corrode the ‘mutual trust’ that is ‘the most pivotal element in the alliance’.
In Australia, the head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, said that if Trump’s vision was enacted ‘you’d have that sense of US disengagement — not going any further west than Hawaii’. Such comments carry some of the alarm that gripped Australian policymakers when Richard Nixon enunciated his Guam doctrine in July 1969, which stipulated that America’s Asian allies needed to assume more of the burden for their own self-defence.
In a similar vein, the eminent strategist Paul Dibb has revived a version of the ultimate nightmare scenario — first raised in the late 19th century — of the great powers becoming embroiled in a European war and therefore leaving Australia defenceless in Asia. Dibb envisages a scenario where a possible Russian attack on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization under President Putin could force the United States to come to the defence of its European allies, thus creating a security vacuum in Asia that Beijing will only be too ready to fill.
It is hardly surprising that Trump’s comments resuscitate old fears among America’s Asian partners. Writing in the Washington Quarterly, Scott Harold noted that the doubts created by various recalibrations of US Asia policy since the late 1960s continue to resonate. Memories of the Nixon doctrine, the eventual abandonment of South Vietnam, the ‘shock’ of the American opening to China and the cutting of official ties to Taiwan all jostle with Washington’s frequent protestations that it is in Asia for the long haul.
It is a time for cool heads and rational analysis. The feverish reactions to Trump’s raw remarks seem to miss the point that even if elected, he would face significant institutional resistance from Washington’s national security community, resistance that would likely prevent — or at the very least significantly modify — the implementation of his drastic vision.
But the unfortunate reality for policymakers in Washington is that Trump’s intervention has come at a poor time. Campaign bluster or not, they reflect a deep, often angry mood in the United States that supports putting ‘America first’. Trump’s cold, transactional vision of alliance management revives longstanding US concerns about ‘freeriding’ and raises again the question of reciprocity in treaty commitments.
That such views have been aired at a time when neither Washington nor any of its Asian allies have found a way to impose a cost on China’s actions in the South China Sea only serves to reinforce an already troubling ambivalence in the region about the future of US policy in Asia.
James Curran is a Professor of History at the University of Sydney and a Research Associate at the US Studies Centre. His most recent book is Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War (MUP, 2015) Curran is currently writing a Penguin Special for the Lowy Institute on the contemporary US-Australia alliance.
“Beijing’s militarisation of these contested territories — transforming rocks and reefs into artificial islands with runways and radars — has driven already close US allies more tightly into the American embrace.”
Hardly. All of ASEAN’s heads of state refused to sign or even endorse ‘the Sunnylands protocols’ devised by Obama’s team. That’s not what people do when they’re ‘driven more tightly into the American embrace’.
None of them has forgotten America’s embrace of Vietnam and of the Asian Financial crisis. In both those crises, China stood by the locals – in stark contrast to the USA.
This post appears to suggest that the US confrontation style approach in the context of maintaining US supremacy is justified. Ironically, the US has a choice to make and it is interestingly to know that not every American shares the author’s view.
While many people both outside and inside the US may find that the Trump phenomenon puzzling and frightening, the very phenomenon certainly reflects some uncomfortable reality.
One has to consider whether the US will continue to have the capacity to be the world policeman, irrespective whether the policeman has done a good job or not.
Another question is whether it is in the US interest to attempt to continue the role of world policeman. It is not costless to the US. At some point it may find that it will no longer to afford it.
At the risk of appearing defensive I would note that the USA’s ‘recalibrations’ in Asia since the 1960’s have been realistic, revaluations of the circumstances which not faced at the time. It’s ‘abandonment’ of SOUTH Vietnam took place because Nixon/Kissinger,finally, realized that it had been supporting a corrupt regime that had little legitimacy among its own population, that it was pursuing a misdirected policy of anti-communism, and that the American public simply would not support the war any longer. The USA cut it’s official ties with Taiwan because the PRC demanded that it do this as the price it had to pay for beginning a relationship. This article fails to note that the USA is still offering Taiwan assurances, albeit somewhat vague, and warnings to the PRC not to take any aggressive action across the Straits.
Any/every country has to ‘recalibrate’ it’s foreign policies as events unfold. It is an admittedly unsettling but natural part of reality.
The author’s claims that “two phenomena are combining to intensify (Asian allies’s) already uneasy relations with Washington. The first is China’s continued assertiveness in the South China Sea. Beijing’s militarisation of these contested territories” has no merit.
If the author cares to refer to the right history books he will discover that under the Treaty of Peace, signed between Japan and the Republic of China (ROC) on 28 April 1952, the Spratly and Paracel islands have been returned to the ROC, by extension, China the rightlful owner, since the US, Japan, Australia and all 10 Asean nations abide by the one-China policy, that Taiwan is a part of China.
http://www.taiwandocuments.org/taipei01.htm
On 4 Sept 1958, China issued a Declaration that henceforth her territorial seas would be 12 nm, and that included the territorial seas in the Spratly and Paracel islands.
The US, Japan, Australia, North Vietnam, France, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei did not raise any objection.
In fact, on 14 Sept, Mr Pham Van Dong, the Prime Minister of North Vietnam, wrote a letter to Premier Zhou En Lai and stated unequivocally “We have the honour to bring to your knowledge that the Government of the DRVN recognizes and supports the declaration dated 4th September, 1958 of the Government of the PRC fixing the width of the Chinese territorial waters…”.
Later, he tried to vitiate his actions in the 16 March 1979 issue of the now defunct, Dow Jones-owned, Far Eastern Economic Review, by stating that he did what he did because it was ‘wartime’.
But it was already on record that Mr Pham had stated on *15 June 1956*, to wit: “From (a) historical point of view, these islands (Spratlys and Paracels) are Chinese territories”, as disclosed in the same issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review.
When oil was discovered in the SCS by ECAFE in the late 1960s, Vietnam grabbed 29 features and today it is the third largest crude oil producer in the SCS, behind Malaysia, which grabbed 6 features and Brunei, one. China has yet to produce a single drop of oil in the SCS.
President Ferdinand Marcos grabbed 9 features in the SCS on *11 June 1978*, using Presidential Decree 1596. Was that legal and rule-based? No.” More here:
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/04/12/what-might-a-new-asian-order-look-like/
Is it fair then to characterize China as being assertive if, despite of the unbridled alienation of China’s territories in the South China Sea, China is still willing to negotiate with each claimant in a peaceful manner, to the satisfaction of both sides? No.
Michael Pascoe rightly asks this question: “Which came first: (a) the US “pivot to Asia” (AKA “encircling China”) or (b) China increasing its forward defence stance in the South China Sea by building artificial islands?” The answer, according to Mr Pascoe is (a). I agree with him.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/world-business/australia-shouldnt-pay-price-for-pivot-20160418-go8rat.html
And what does Prof Curran expect a nuclear-powered China to do when faced with the US pivot? Roll over and pretend to play dead?
Any claim that China is a veritable threat to her Asian neighbors is also seriously flawed when President Xi Jingping has already pledged on 7 Nov last year in Singapore that ‘a strong China will never bully any weak nation and a rich China will never humiliate any poor nation’.
Is it any wonder then that “not one US ally has decided to follow Washington in conducting a freedom of navigation exercise within the 12 nautical mile zone around these territories.”?
Why is the author not characterizing the US as being assertive, when Obama is pivoting to Asia, is bombing 7 nations and the US is flying B52 nuclear bombers over Chinese islands or Japan as untrustworthy, when Abe has persistently refused to apologize for the WW2 atrocities committed in China, Korea, etc or for the crimes against humanity committed against the ‘Comfort Women’ and for worshiping at the Yasukuni shrine, where 14 Class A Japanese give the same pledge? Is this another example of selective amnesia?
The claim that “It is hardly surprising that Trump’s comments resuscitate old fears among America’s Asian partners” also has no merit.
I wrote in the comment “What might a new Asian order look like under China’s leadership?” here:
“1 For a start, China will put to an end to the so-called ‘endless wars’, hatched and executed by Uncle Sam and the Neo-cons since 9/11.
2 A Chinese leadership could do away with nuclear weapons from Planet Earth for good, as has been proposed by China, ad nauseum.
3 There will be peaceful settlements in the disputes in the South China Sea (SCS) and the East China Sea, as President Xi Jinping has pledged on 7 Nov last year that ‘a strong China will never bully any weak nation and a rich China will never humiliate any poor nation’.”
For more please go to the second link above on what what might a new Asian order look like.
In case anyone has any slightest doubt that prime minister Shinzo Abe will stop visiting or making ritual offerings to the Yasukuni shrine, where 14 Class A Japanese war criminals, convicted and executed by a US-led Allied tribunal, are buried, these are further proofs that he won’t and it raises a red flag, especially when he and his cabinet ministers have reinterpreted Article 9 of Japan’s peace constitution and Abe is slated to amend it this summer.
When that happens Japan may up the ante, with US backing, and manufacture a war with China, a war which will seriously affect Australia’s economy, as China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 26per cent of Australia’s total global exports:
1 “A group of Japanese lawmakers on Friday (April 22) visited a Tokyo shrine seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism to pay respects to the country’s war dead, a step that could strain ties with its Asian neighbours China and South Korea, Kyodo news agency reported.
The visit comes a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 war criminals convicted by an Allied tribunal are among those honoured, to mark its annual spring festival, and ahead of an expected visit by Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida to China.
Mr Kishida will likely meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on April 30 to try to ease friction over issues such as sovereignty disputes in the East China Sea and China’s assertive moves in the South China Sea, the Japanese media has said.”
More here:
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/japan-lawmakers-visit-controversial-yasukuni-shrine-for-war-dead-in-tokyo
2 “Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent an offering to a shrine for war dead on Saturday, the 70th anniversary of Japan’s World War Two defeat, but had not made a personal visit to the shrine, seen in China and South Korea as a symbol of Tokyo’s wartime militarism.” More below:
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/abe-sends-ritual-offering-to-yasukuni-shrine-on-world-war-ii-anniversary
Western media’s narrative about China’s ‘aggressive’ posture in SCS is not only exaggerated but is completely divorced from reality. Of the 6 claimants only Brunei hasn’t constructed any reclaimation structures. Again, all except Brunei maintain substantial military presence on these constructed structures. It is nonsensical to accuse China of violating FON. The biggest potential loser in any blocking of trade activity is PRC itself. It makes absolutely no sence for PRC to engage in any behavior so manifestly contrary to its own economic or political interests. I don’t believe China is the troublemaker. The US is. And Japan.