Barack Obama Throws Japan Under Bus – Capitulates To Chinese Demands

By Ulsterman

The mainstream media gave much coverage to the fact the U.S. military recently sent two B-52 bombers across a stretch of disputed air space that China has recently lay claim to – an aggressive move aimed directly at both Japan and America. 

What these media reports failed to include, was the backdoor capitulation the Obama administration did at nearly the same time it was pretending to stand up to the Chinese. 

It was an act of dangerous capitulation that not will not only embolden China, but throws longtime ally Japan under the wheels of the Obama bus.

Barack Obama bowing to China’s president.
If you do a bit of hunting and pecking reader, you can find a few reports outlining what the Obama administration did regarding the China conflict.
Japan instructed its commercial airlines to ignore China’s claim on the disputed airspace, telling them NOT to ask for permission from the Chinese government before flying through it. 

This was done to prevent any legitimization of the Chinese claims they control the airspace.
The Obama government though, did the exact opposite, instructing American commercial flights to get approval from the Chinese government first. 

The administration will likely claim this is to ensure the safety of those flights. 

What it has done though is exactly what the Japanese government did not want – it legitimizes the Chinese claim on the disputed airspace.
It is an outright capitulation by the American government that favors the Chinese at the expense of the Japanese. 

It heightens tensions, not alleviates them, and further, places those Japanese commercial flights at greater risk.
Dangerous, ignorant, and incompetent are all terms completely at home within the Obama foreign policy. Make no mistake, behind closed doors the Japanese government is seething, as this is yet another example of the current United States government proving itself utterly devoid of trust and mutual cooperation with its longstanding allies.

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Paper Dragon

US forces operating 'normally' in China air zone. Japan and South Korea both disregarded the ADIZ, showing a united front after US B-52 bombers entered the area.
AFP

Beijing — US military chiefs have insisted they will not change their operations despite China scrambling fighter jets to monitor American and Japanese aircraft in Beijing's newly declared air defence zone.

But the State Department said US commercial airlines should observe China's demand to be given notice of aircraft entering the zone, while stating that compliance "does not indicate US government acceptance of China's requirements".
China flew warplanes into its air defence identification zone (ADIZ) on Friday, Chinese state media said, nearly a week after it announced the zone, which covers islands at the centre of a dispute between Beijing and Tokyo, raising regional tensions.
The Xinhua report indicated that Japan and the United States are continuing to disregard China's demands that aircraft submit flight plans when traversing the area in the East China Sea or face unspecified "defensive emergency measures".
"We have flights routinely transiting international airspace throughout the Pacific, including the area China is including in their ADIZ," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said on Friday.
"These flights are consistent with long-standing and well-known US freedom of navigation policies that are applied in many areas of operation around the world. I can confirm that the US has and will continue to operate in the area as normal."
Compliance by commercial flights "does not indicate US government acceptance of China's requirements for operating in the newly declared ADIZ," the State Department said in a statement.
Japanese airlines, under pressure from Tokyo, stopped following China's new rules on Wednesday, after initially complying.
In its evening edition Saturday, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said Japan's two biggest airlines were unlikely to change their stance even after the US announcement that commercial airlines should observe China's demand.
Japan Airlines said it had "no plan to change our stance at the moment" while All Nippon Airways said it would follow instructions from the transport ministry, the daily reported the two companies as saying.
Chinese air force spokesman Shen Jinke said Friday that several combat aircraft were scrambled to "verify the identities" of US and Japanese aircraft entering the air defence zone, according to Xinhua.

The Chinese planes, which included at least two fighter jets, identified two US surveillance aircraft and 10 Japanese aircraft including an F-15 warplane, Shen said.
Japan and South Korea both said Thursday they had disregarded the ADIZ, showing a united front after US B-52 bombers also entered the area.
Despite the scrambling of jets referred to in China's state media, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera on Saturday said there were no "peculiar developments".
"We do not recognise there have been peculiar developments that we should disclose such as one where aircraft suddenly came close as the Chinese side announced yesterday," he said.
"We have been making our utmost efforts to be vigilant and we will continue," he added.
Onodera also called on China to use "common sense" over the air defence zone.
"It is important for both sides to respond in a calm manner," he said, according to the Kyodo news agency. "We want (China) to deal with this issue according to common sense in the international community".
Beijing is facing considerable internal pressure to assert itself. 

China's state media called Friday for "timely countermeasures without hesitation" if Japan violates the zone but it shied away from threatening Washington.
Washington has security alliances with both Tokyo and Seoul, and analysts say that neither China nor Japan -- the world's second and third-biggest economies, and major trading partners of each other -- want to engage in armed conflict.
The Communist Party seeks to bolster its public support by tapping into deep-seated resentment of Japan for its invasion of the country in the 1930s.
Such passions are easily ignited, and posters on Chinese social media networks have urged Beijing to act.
China's rules covering the zone require aircraft to provide their flight plan, declare their nationality and maintain two-way radio communication -- or face unspecified "defensive emergency measures".
Both Japan, which denies that there is a dispute over the islands, and Washington have ADIZs of their own, and China accuses them of double standards -- though China's zone includes a rock that is disputed between Beijing and Seoul, as well as islands controlled by Japan and claimed by China.
The European Union added its voice to the criticism of the zone, with its top foreign affairs official Catherine Ashton saying it "contributes to raising tensions in the region".
The Yomiuri Shimbun on Saturday reported that the United States and Japan would issue a joint statement demanding China scrap the air zone during a visit to Tokyo by US Vice President Joe Biden next week. Biden will meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday.

B-52 diplomacy

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Face-off

Like a teenager on a growth spurt who doesn’t know his own strength, China has underestimated the impact of its actions. 

The Economist

THE announcement by a Chinese military spokesman on November 23rd sounded bureaucratic: any aircraft flying through the newly designated Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea must notify Chinese authorities in advance and follow instructions from its air-traffic controllers. 

America’s response was rapid. 

On November 26th Barack Obama sent two B-52 bombers to fly through the new zone without notifying China. 

This face-off marks the most worrying strategic escalation between the two countries since 1996, when China’s then president, Jiang Zemin, ordered a number of exclusion zones for missile tests in the Taiwan Strait, leading America to send two aircraft-carriers there.
Plenty of countries establish zones in which they require aircraft to identify themselves, but they tend not to be over other countries’ territory. 

The Chinese ADIZ overlaps with Japan’s own air-defence zone (see map). 

It also includes some Japanese specks of rock called the Senkaku islands, as well as a South Korean reef, known as Ieodo. 

The move is clearly designed to bolster China’s claims. 

On November 28th Japan and South Korea sent aircraft into the zone.

Teenage testosterone
Growing economic power is bound to go hand-in-hand with growing regional assertiveness. 

That is fine, so long as the behaviour of the rising power remains within international norms. 

In this case, however, China’s does not; and America, which has guaranteed free navigation of the seas and skies of East Asia for 60 years, is right to make that clear.
How worrying China’s move is depends partly on the thinking behind it.

It may be that, like a teenager on a growth spurt who doesn’t know his own strength, China has underestimated the impact of its actions. 

The claim that America’s bombers had skirted the edge of the ADIZ was gawkily embarrassing. 

But teenagers who do not realise the consequences of their actions often cause trouble: China has set up a casus belli with its neighbours and America for generations to come.
It would thus be much more worrying if the provocation was deliberate. 

The “Chinese dream” of Xi Jinping, the new president, is a mixture of economic reform and strident nationalism. 

The announcement of the ADIZ came shortly after a party plenum at which Mr Xi announced a string of commendably radical domestic reforms. 

The new zone will appeal to the nationalist camp, which wields huge power, particularly in the armed forces. It also helps defend Mr Xi against any suggestions that he is a westernising liberal.
If this is Mr Xi’s game, it is a dangerous one. 

East Asia has never before had a strong China and a strong Japan at the same time. 

China dominated the region from the mists of history until the 1850s, when the West’s arrival spurred Japan to modernise while China tried to resist the foreigners’ influence. 

China is eager to re-establish dominance over the region. 

Bitterness at the memory of the Japanese occupation in the second world war sharpens this desire. 

It is this possibility of a clash between a rising and an established power that lies behind the oft-used parallel between contemporary East Asia and early 20th-century Europe, in which the Senkakus play the role of Sarajevo.

Seas of troubles
Tensions are not at that level. 

Japan’s constitution bans it from any military aggression and China normally goes to great lengths to stress that its rise—unlike that of Japan in the 1920s and 1930s—will be peaceful. 

But the neighbours are nervous, especially as the establishment of the ADIZ appears to match Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
Chinese maps show what is known as the “nine-dash line” encompassing all the South China Sea. 

In the wake of the global financial crisis, perhaps believing its own narrative of Chinese rise and American decline, it began to overreach in its dealings with its neighbours. 

It sent ships to disputed reefs, pressed foreign oil companies to halt exploration and harassed American and Vietnamese naval vessels in the South China Sea. 

These actions brought a swift rebuke from America’s then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and China appeared to back off and return to its regional charm offensive. 

Some observers say that the government is using the ADIZ to establish a nine-dash line covering the East China Sea as well. 

They fear China’s next move will be to declare an ADIZ over the South China Sea, to assert control over both the sea and the air throughout the region.
Whether or not China has such specific ambitions, the ADIZ clearly suggests that China does not accept the status quo in the region and wants to change it. 

Any Chinese leader now has an excuse for going after Japanese planes. 

Chinese ships are already ignoring Japanese demands not to enter the waters surrounding the disputed islands.
What can be done? 

Next week Joe Biden, America’s vice-president, arrives in China. 

The timing may be uncomfortable, but it is fortuitous. 

Mr Biden and Mr Xi know each other well: before Mr Xi became president, he spent five days in America at Mr Biden’s invitation. 

Mr Biden is also going to South Korea and Japan.
America’s “pivot” towards Asia is not taken very seriously there: Mr Obama is seen as distracted by his domestic problems. 

Mr Biden could usefully make clear America’s commitment to guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the region. 

Japan and South Korea, who squabble over petty issues, need to be told to get over their differences. 

As for China, it needs to behave like a responsible world power, not a troublemaker willing to sacrifice 60 years of peace in north-east Asia to score some points by grabbing a few windswept rocks. 

It should accept Japan’s suggestion of a military hotline, similar to the one that is already established between Beijing and Washington.
The region must work harder to build some kind of architecture where regional powers can discuss security. If such a framework had existed in Europe in 1914, things might have turned out differently.

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U.S., Japan slam China's destabilizing move on East China Sea airspace

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called Beijing's move a "destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in the region"

By Chang-Ran Kim and Phil Stewart
Vessels from the China Maritime Surveillance and the Japan Coast Guard are seen near Japanese Senkaku islands, in the East China Sea, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 10, 2013

TOKYO/WASHINGTON -- Japan and ally the United States sharply criticized China's move to impose new rules on airspace over Japanese Senkaku islands, warning of an escalation into the "unexpected" if Beijing enforces the rules.
China's government-run Xinhua news agency published coordinates for a newly established "East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone," which covers most of that sea and includes the skies over the disputed islands.
Beijing warned that it would take "defensive emergency measures" against aircraft that failed to identify themselves properly in the airspace.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said the move was unacceptable. 

"It could well lead to an unforeseen situation," he told reporters on Sunday.
Ties between the Asian powers, the world's second and third biggest economies, have been strained for months by the dispute over the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea.

The islands are under Japanese administrative control.
Saturday's announcement suggests that foreign aircraft merely passing through that zone would have to follow China's procedures -- or face unknown, potentially dangerous consequences.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged China to exercise caution and restraint, saying freedom of overflight was essential to stability and security in the Pacific.
"We urge China not to implement its threat to take action against aircraft that do not identify themselves or obey orders from Beijing," he said in a statement.
"We remain steadfastly committed to our allies and partners, and hope to see a more collaborative and less confrontational future in the Pacific."
A U.S.-Japan security treaty commits Washington to intervene in defense of Japan if there is an attack on Japanese-administered territory. 

The United States has a hefty military presence in Japan, including on the southern island of Okinawa, which is close to the disputed isles.
Xinhua said in a commentary the "air zone could contribute to regional peace and security by curbing the increasing rampancy of Japan's right-wing forces, as well as the continuous and dangerous provocations of Japanese politicians, which even Washington should be vigilant against".
Tensions flared last year when the government bought three of the islands from a private landowner to fend off a purchase by the Tokyo metropolitan government, at the time headed by governor Shintaro Ishihara.
Tokyo lodged a strong protest through the Chinese embassy, calling the action "totally unacceptable" and warning that the overlap of the air defense identification zone could lead to an "unexpected occurrence of accidents in the airspace".
A senior diplomat in China's Tokyo embassy, Han Zhiqiang, dismissed Tokyo's protests, saying in a statement that "Japan has no right to make irresponsible remarks".
Han said the Chinese government's aim was to defend its national sovereignty and territorial airspace and was not aimed at a specific country or target. 

He added it did not affect the freedom to pass through the airspace.
Xinhua said the latest rules came into force on Saturday and China's air force conducted its first patrol over the zone. 

The patrol included early warning aircraft and fighters, it said.
Japan, for its part, scrambled fighter jets on Saturday afternoon against two Chinese reconnaissance planes over the East China Sea, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.

HAGEL SAYS MOVE IS DESTABLIZING
In a strongly worded statement, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called Beijing's move a "destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in the region".
"This unilateral action increases the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculations," he said.
One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Beijing's move was being interpreted as "a direct challenge" to Japan's operations in the area, believed to be surrounded by energy-rich seabed.
Security experts echoed the concerns about an escalation, saying that if China were to enforce the air defense identification zone, a non-military Chinese aircraft's flying into it could lead to a military face-off between the two sides.
"If two fighter aircraft -- one from their side and one from our side -- meet in the air, that would create a precarious situation," said Narushige Michishita, director at Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. "That's very dangerous."
Tensions in the region are expected to be a topic of discussion when Vice-President Joe Biden travels to China, Japan and South Korea in early December.
The United States has not taken a position on sovereignty issues in the regional maritime disputes, but has stressed the need for the free flow of commerce, a reduction in tensions, and peace and stability in the region.
China's move comes on the heels of a visit there last week by a delegation of Japanese business leaders in the hopes of improving economic ties. 

Trade between the two countries amounts to $250 billion annually, but Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping have yet to hold an official meeting.

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The Sources of the Sino-American Spiral

By Jennifer Lind, Daryl Press

The paramount question looming over twenty-first century international politics is: will the United States and China get along?

Most national-security experts express guarded optimism. 

Although rising powers have historically clashed with their established rivals—adopting revisionist foreign policies to secure more influence, territory, or status—this time, people say, is different. 

China is a major stakeholder in the current economic order and has no reason to overthrow the very system that has allowed it to grow rich and powerful. 

The regional maritime disputes that do exist—over small uninhabitable islets—may arouse emotions but do not demonstrate a deep revisionist streak in Beijing. 

In short, a status quo Washington and a status quo Beijing need not clash.
But pondering the future of East Asia—and great power relations—in terms of whether China will adopt a “status-quo” or “revisionist” grand strategy obscures the real sources of Sino-American conflict. 

It ignores the range of options available to Beijing, and it pins the future on China’s strategic decisions alone.
In reality, the tenor of great-power relations in the coming decades will depend on the interaction of U.S. and Chinese foreign policies—which collide to a far greater degree than is frequently acknowledged. 

In fact, smooth relations between the United States and China will only be possible in the unlikely event that China adopts an extremely docile national-security strategy, or in the equally unlikely event that the United States cedes its dominant position in the Western Pacific.

CHINESE MENU
Beijing has a broader array of options than the categories “status quo” or “revisionist” imply. 

What is striking, however, is that all but one of its options put Beijing and Washington on a collision course.

At one extreme, China might continue its rise as an economic powerhouse without substantially enhancing its military might, and without seeking to alter the international order in East Asia or the world.
The logic of this “Rich Nation, Weak Army” strategy is straightforward: China has enjoyed spectacular economic success for four decades while pursuing Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of strategic restraint—so why rock the boat now? 

Foreign-policy restraint has allowed China to focus on its homeland security, prioritize butter over guns, and benefit from the fact that other countries—particularly the United States—have borne the costs of protecting the global order. 

Continuing this modest strategy would help reassure Beijing’s wary neighbors, minimize the odds of conflict with the United States, and allow Beijing to concentrate on China’s many domestic challenges (social, demographic, environmental, and institutional).
According to this grand strategy, Beijing would pursue its foreign policy goals through multilateral institutions and posture its military for modest and internationally sanctioned missions such as peacekeeping, disaster relief and antipiracy operations. 

Its national-security policy and military would be akin to that of Australia, Indonesia or the Philippines. Skeptics might note that this strategy entails, de facto, relying upon the United States to ensure global order and protect China’s interests. 

True; but modern China has never been able to defend its airspace or coastal waters from the major military powers, let alone project military power far from its shores. 

And yet it has prospered.

Alternatively, Beijing might choose a strategy that reflects its emergence as the major regional power in East Asia. 

An accommodating version of a regionally focused strategy would seek to establish China as a major East Asian military power—while not changing the region’s political and economic order. 

China would not become expansionist, overturn the existing liberal economic system, or try to expel the U.S. military from the region. 

Rather, the goals of this strategy are modest and the logic is straightforward: although the current liberal order is good for Beijing—and should continue—it is natural that a great power such as China be able to defend itself and its interests in its own backyard.
In a more assertive version of this regional strategy, China would seek to become not just a major regional power, but also the dominant one. 

This would not necessarily be accomplished through conquest or coercion; instead, Beijing would simply generate so much economic influence and military might that it would become obvious to the countries of East Asia that there is one natural leader of the region—and it is China. 

China growing military capabilities would convince other East Asian countries that the United States could no longer reliably protect them. 

The goal: to ensure that the countries of East Asia begin to look to Beijing—even with gritted teeth—much as the countries in Eastern Europe look to Moscow, and those in Latin America look to Washington.

In the long term, China would establish its own informal Monroe Doctrine: while of course other countries’ ships would be welcome to sail through regional sea lanes, foreign military bases operated by regional outsiders would be as unwelcome in East Asia as they are now in the Americas.
To implement either version of this regional strategy, China would build the air and naval forces to control the airspace and waters out to a few hundred miles from the Chinese coast, and to project military power throughout maritime East Asia. 

Beijing would likely seek allies in the region to host Chinese military forces. 

The more assertive version would require the same sort of military forces—just more of them.
If Beijing chose to pursue a revisionist regional strategy, it would engage in diplomacy aimed at ousting the United States from the region. 

It would use various forms of influence and leverage to try to break up America’s key alliances. 

China’s diplomacy would seek to convince its neighbors of two things—first, that they can be just as rich, free, safe, and independent within a Chinese-led order as they are within the current order. 

Second, Beijing would seek to convince them that allying with powerful outsiders against China is a dangerous option—because eventually those outsiders will leave, and when they do, the neighbors will be left next to an unfriendly and regionally dominant Beijing.
Critics might protest that China would not want to topple the economic order that has promoted its rise—but there is nothing about even the more revisionist version of this strategy that would do this. 

This strategy would promote free trade and investment, and seek peaceful relations among the countries of East Asia, but would do so without the intrusions of a distant great power.

Like Russia’s dominance in Eastern Europe, and U.S. preeminence throughout North America, this strategy would establish China as the dominant player in East Asia.

A third overarching option for China: look beyond its region to become a global political and military power. China has global interests. 

It is a leader in international trade, a key player in currency and bond markets, a major target and sender of international investment. 

Its economy depends on access to distant energy supplies. 

And Chinese firms and people have spread across the world from Suriname to Iran, from Kazakhstan to Angola. 

Yet Beijing has limited ability to influence events around the world. 

In Europe, the members of the EU and the United States (through NATO) make the key decisions; the Persian Gulf is dominated by the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and their U.S. partners. 

While China has a stake in all of these regions, it is marginalized. 

Under a global strategy, China would seek the global influence commensurate with power and global interests.
In a more benign version of a global strategy, China would merely seek greater influence around the world to ensure that its interests are respected. 

It would not try to remake the Persian Gulf or Latin America, or to push the United States out of any region. Rather, China as a status-quo global power would merely seek a portfolio of interests—which because of economic globalization now span the globe.
China might alternatively adopt a more revisionist global posture. (This is generally what people have in mind when they contemplate China as a “revisionist” great power.) 

This strategy would seek to reorder international politics and to minimize American power and influence around the world, by luring countries out of the U.S. orbit and by providing an alternative to opponents of the United States (through political support, trade agreements, security guarantees and arms sales).

It would give cohesion to countries—such as Iran and Venezuela—that oppose the U.S.-led world order, yet are regionally dispersed and lack the coordination to effectively oppose Washington.
Pursuing either version of a global strategy would require increased defense spending—though perhaps merely maintaining China’s current spending as a percentage of GDP, as Beijing’s GDP increases—to develop global power-projection capabilities. 

A revisionist China would likely purvey an ideology or narrative that justified its own global authority and discredited American leadership. 

Fundamentally this strategy would be about shaping the world in a way that is most conducive to Chinese influence, by building alliances and a network of friends across the globe. 

Even the revisionist version of a global strategy is not necessarily aggressive or violent; it is about leadership—the same kind of strategy that the United States has followed for the past twenty years.

PEACE THROUGH DOMINANCE
Peaceful U.S.-China relations depend not merely on Chinese decisions, but on how they interact with the American national-security strategy. 

Like China, the United States has a menu of strategic options; unlike China, however, the United States has a well-established grand strategy, which includes longstanding alliances in East Asia.
Since the end of the Cold War, across four successive administrations, the United States has pursued a strikingly consistent national-security strategy—variously called “hegemony,” “global leadership,” or “deep engagement.” 

While the specifics fluctuate, the core principles—exercising leadership and promoting stability through a global network of alliances—have remained constant.
To be sure, disagreements about implementation arise regularly. 

Liberals tend to favor humanitarian intervention, value broad international coalitions, and prefer to work through international institutions. 

Conservatives are more inclined to use force to prevent the spread of WMD, and worry less about passing a “global test” (as Secretary of State John Kerry famously commented as a presidential candidate) when they contemplate using force. 

But tactical disagreements should not obscure the underlying bipartisan consensus: the United States will exercise global leadership, and ensure stability, through a network of alliances and powerful military presence in critical regions.
To implement this strategy in East Asia, the United States pursues three benign-sounding objectives. 

First, assurance: the United States seeks to assure its friends that it will protect them in time of crisis or war, and that it can do so effectively. 

The goal of assurance is to convince U.S. allies to forego independent steps to protect themselves (e.g., building powerful conventional military forces or nuclear weapons)—because such steps could trigger arms races and upset the region’s political and economic order.
A second American objective is deterrence. 

The United States seeks to dissuade potential adversaries from turning disagreements into crises, and to deter them from turning crises into wars.
Finally, the United States seeks to promote political and economic cooperation—thereby turning allies and potential adversaries into stakeholders in a mutually beneficial, peaceful and prosperous region.
None of these goals sound provocative—who would argue against promoting stability and cooperation? 

The potential for trouble lies in the strategy’s military requirements.
Because of the structure of the U.S. alliance system, and the nature of modern naval warfare, the benign-sounding U.S. policy toward Asia requires not merely U.S. military presence in the region, it requires a substantial degree of military dominance. 

Depending on China’s future national-security choices, U.S. military dominance may cause considerable friction with Beijing.
Two pillars of the U.S. strategy—assuring allies, and deterring potential adversaries—rest upon U.S. military dominance in the Western Pacific. 

Allies can only feel safe outsourcing their security to the United States if they are confident that in time of crisis or war, Washington will be able to defend them effectively. 

This means that U.S. allies must be sure that the U.S. military will be able to cross five thousand miles of ocean with enough military power to decisively defeat whoever is menacing them. 

If allies begin to doubt U.S. power projection capabilities, they will, quite reasonably, feel compelled to develop more military power of their own. 

Similarly, the U.S. strategy requires that adversaries have no practical means for keeping American power projection at bay. 

If adversaries believe that they can keep U.S. reinforcements out of the region, deterrence will be undermined. 

The cornerstone of the U.S. strategy in East Asia is thus the ability to bring decisive force to bear if needed.
The changing nature of warfare makes power projection across vast oceans increasingly difficult.

Modern sensors—satellite-based, ground-based, on unmanned aerial vehicles, and underwater—make tracking ships at sea easier than ever before. 

Furthermore, long-range strike systems, such as ballistic missiles and antiship cruise missiles, make it easier to destroy lumbering ships once they’ve been located. 

The United States has other means of projecting power into East Asia—for example, using forward air bases—but those bases are also easy targets for missile strikes, and increasingly sophisticated air-defense systems threaten to keep U.S. aircraft far from enemy coasts. 

The central role of power projection in U.S. national-security strategy—and the growing threat to ships and forward bases—explains the U.S. Defense Department’s focus over the past decade on the “antiaccess” threat, especially China’s growing capabilities.
The U.S. military’s answer to this problem (known as “AirSea Battle”) is straightforward: be prepared to defeat antiaccess forces by blinding enemy sensors, degrading their command and control systems, and destroying their most capable conventional strike systems (e.g., those that target U.S. ships and airfields). The point is that in the age of advanced sensors and lethal long-range missiles, projecting overwhelming power across an ocean requires the ability to blind, disrupt, and disarm one’s enemies at the opening stages of conflict.
Pro-China critics accuse the U.S. military of exaggerating the China threat. 

These critics protest that China has only a fraction of U.S. military power, and they decry expensive new weapons to defeat antiaccess capabilities as provocative and unnecessary. 

But regardless of the aggregate balance of military power between the United States and China, the U.S. Navy and Air Force are correct that U.S. strategy in Asia hinges on the promise to bring overwhelming force to bear—despite the expanse of the Pacific Ocean and the growing threat to power-projection forces. 

If China can substantially impede U.S. access during a war, the U.S. strategy toward the region will unravel.

WINTER IS COMING
Given Washington’s national-security strategy, the only Chinese policy that will not conflict with U.S. national-security goals is the most docile option—the strategy of “rich nation, weak army.”

If China pursues any of the other options—including the more defensive ones—U.S.-China relations are likely to grow much more conflictual. 

Even if Beijing merely wants to be Washington's peer in China's own backyard, that would threaten the U.S. ability to move military forces to and around East Asia, undermining the core of Washington's regional strategy. 

Those analysts who argue that a status-quo China need not conflict with the United States underestimate the extent to which Chinese and American grand strategies are on trajectories that collide.
The best hope for amicable U.S.-China relations rests on Beijing adopting a highly restrained grand strategy, but it would be historically unprecedented if it did so. 

China would be choosing to live within a security order managed by another great power—one with whom it has tense relations. 

While some countries have pursued docile grand strategies (one thinks of Australia, Canada and Japan), they have done so under the protection of a friendly, like-minded ally, the United States. 

In fact, two of America’s closest cold war allies, West Germany and Japan, took docility only so far. 

They built potent conventional military forces and, in Japan’s case, a nuclear hedge in the form of a giant stockpile of plutonium. 

Great powers have not entrusted their security to this degree to another great power unless they had little choice or unusually warm relations.
Indeed, a look at China’s national-security policy—its pursuit of antiaccess capabilities, its territorial claims, and discussions of claims to “second island chains”—suggests that it is at a minimum aspiring to be a regional great power. 

The remaining questions are the extent to which Beijing will confine its ambitions to East Asia (as opposed to pursuing a global strategy), and the extent to which it will tolerate U.S. global leadership or seek to undermine U.S. influence.
And the United States? 

In theory, Washington, like Beijing, has a number of strategic alternatives and could choose to adopt a strategy (such as “offshore balancing”) that would not require U.S. military dominance in the Pacific.

But this appears unlikely. 

There is little support for this move within the American foreign-policy establishment, the U.S. military or the globalized American economic elite. 

Offshore balancing would be a radical departure from the way that the United States currently operates in East Asia; from how it plans to operate in the region in coming decades; and from how it has organized U.S. security in the region for the past sixty years.
Some might argue that by demonstrating greater humility and modesty the United States can continue its current strategy while still reassuring China. 

Summits can be held; regional institutions can be strengthened; Beijing can be empowered with leadership roles. 

Liberals criticized George W. Bush for aggressive policies that were offensive to U.S. allies and adversaries alike. 

They argue that more diplomatically savvy, consensus-building leaders can reassure allies and soothe others that We Come In Peace.
But evidence from the past five years does not support this view. 

American grand strategy under a Democratic administration has not noticeably changed—if anything, U.S. policy is even more assertive in East Asia. 

Though a supporter of the policy, Asia scholar Michael Green characterizes the Obama administration's rebalancing effort as aimed at China’s “soft underbelly” in Southeast Asia—deepening military ties with the Philippines and Singapore; stationing 2,500 U.S. Marines in Darwin, Australia; and even flirting with America’s Cold War adversary Vietnam (which dwells on the Chinese border). 

The very dynamics we describe—China fearing the United States and acting to counter it; the United States fearing those countermeasures and then responding in turn—have not only occurred but have accelerated during the Obama administration.
In some sense, the greatest danger for the United States is the illusion that the current strategy of “leadership” or “deep engagement” is benign and unthreatening. 

China’s pursuit of a policy of “deep engagement” in Latin America or the Caribbean would be viewed by policymakers in Washington as outrageously provocative. 

As China’s power grows, Beijing's leaders are likely to develop similar intolerance of American aircraft flying near their shores, U.S. warships plying nearby waters and the network of U.S. military bases that surrounds China.
The fundamental problem in U.S.-China relations—the engine of conflict between the two countries—is neither America’s grand strategy nor Beijing’s. 

China would be entirely reasonable in wanting the ability to defend its airspace and coastal waters from foreign powers. 

It is also perfectly reasonable for the United States to want to uphold its sixty-year-long security commitments to the region by retaining the ability to move powerful air and naval forces there.
Of course, perhaps a U.S.-China clash will never occur—after all, as with the much-hyped rises of the Soviet Union and Japan, China’s economy may languish or implode; a “Chinese Spring” could also derail its future prosperity. 

But assuming China’s economy continues to grow at a healthy rate, unless the United States departs from six decades of foreign-policy precedent, or unless China elects to pursue extreme foreign-policy meekness, America’s and China’s reasonable national-security interests will collide. 

This is how the tragedy of great-power politics unfolds.

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US, PH launch war games near South China Sea

AFP

SAN ANTONIO -- The Philippines and the United States launched war games Wednesday at a naval base facing turbulent waters claimed by China, as the allies sought to highlight their expanding military alliance.
About 2,300 marines from both sides are taking part in the annual maneuvers which this year are being staged alongside the South China Sea and come ahead of US President Barack Obama's planned first visit to the Philippines next month.
The Philippines, which has been seeking US military support to counter a growing Chinese threat to its South China Sea territory, welcomed the exercises as another important plank in building its defense capabilities.
"Multilateral exercises and agreements are essential in our cooperation and operational readiness as a multi-capable force, ready to defend our country's sovereignty and integrity," Philippine Navy vice-commander Rear Admiral Jaime Bernardino said in a speech at the opening of the exercises.
The three-week Philippine-US Amphibious Landing Exercises (Phiblex) will involve two US warships and live ground fire exercises, according to the Philippine military.
The Filipino exercises commander, Brigadier-General Remigio Valdez, said they would also include simulated amphibious assaults to capture islands held by hostile forces.
"We are building our capability on amphibious operations, so it's part of the scenario," he told reporters, although no specific hostile country was named.

Scarborough Shoal a flashpoint for tensions
The exercises were launched at a naval base in San Antonio, a town on the western coast of Luzon island that faces the South China Sea.
The naval base is about 220 kilometers (135 miles) from Scarborough Shoal, a group of rocky outcrops that is one of the flashpoint areas in the territorial dispute between the Philippines and China.
The Philippines insists it has sovereign rights to the shoal, which fishermen from coastal towns near San Antonio have sailed to for decades, because it is well within its internationally recognized exclusive economic zone.
The nearest major Chinese land mass to Scarborough Shoal is Hainan island, about 650 kilometers away.
But China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters and land formations close to the other countries.
Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as the Philippines, have overlapping claims to parts of the sea,
The rivalries have for decades made the sea, home to vital global shipping lanes, a potential trigger for military conflict.
Tensions have risen sharply in recent years amid accusations by the Philippines and Vietnam of increasing Chinese aggressiveness.
The Philippines says Chinese vessels have occupied Scarborough Shoal since last year, preventing Filipino fishermen from going there.
This month the Philippines accused China of erecting concrete structures there to begin a permanent presence.
However neither the US nor Philippine side would say exactly where the Phiblex exercises would be held, and Valdez said the drill to retake islands was not for Scarborough Shoal.
"There is no specific activity in the exercises designed (for) the Scarborough," Valdez said.
The exercises take place as the allies are moving closer to a planned deal that would expand the US military presence in the Philippines.
The pact would allow the United States to bring military hardware on to local bases, and formalize more US troop visits.
The Philippines has said it wants the pact signed as soon as possible.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Brigadier-General Paul Kennedy, commander of the US 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, said he did not know if the agreement would be ready in time for Obama's visit to the Philippines.
"If it comes out of the president's visit and if it's politically mature enough to have been signed at that point it would be fortuitous, but I don't have any idea where it stands at this point," Kennedy told reporters.
The United States had a permanent military presence at two bases in the Philippines until 1992, when they were closed amid nationalist opposition.

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