Is the US trying to instigate a Japan-China proxy war? (Part One)Washington : DC : USA | Feb 09, 2014
By JOHN THOMAS DIDYMUS
People's Republic of ChinaAuthor's note: This is the first of a three-part series.
Introduction
The US Secretary of State John Kerry recently assured Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida that the US would provide military assistance to Japan in the event of a military confrontation with China.
Referring to the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the US and Japan on Friday, Kerry gave assurance that the US would not abandon Japan in the event of a conflict with China.
"The United States neither recognizes nor accepts China's declared East China Sea [Air Defense Identification Zone] and the United States has no intention of changing how we conduct operations in the region," Kerry said.
The statement comes amid growing tensions between China and Japan after China declared an air defense zone over an area of the East China Sea to which Japan lays claim.
Kerry's comments on Friday were the latest among previous statements that Chinese analysts have interpreted as growing evidence that the US is seeking an opportunity to use the Japanese to instigate a "limited conflict" as part of effort to curb China's growing power in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Chinese have protested US actions in the East China Sea region in the past, with the state-owned Xinhua news agency and the Communist Party affiliated Global Times denouncing the US, accusing it of seeking to destabilize the region.
Chinese analysts have always argued that the major cause of rising tensions in the Asia-Pacific region is the US "pivot" policy. They argue that US moves to strengthen military alliances and buildup military presence close to its territorial borders leave China with no options but to take more proactive self-defensive measures, such as trying to establish early warning systems by declaring an air defense zone over an area that includes the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyou islands.
Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan has argued in line with the Chinese analysts that as a growing power, China's increased concern about "offshore defense strategy" especially in the face of US "pivot" policy is legitimate.
In the circumstances of US intervention in the region, China has legitimate reasons to seek measures to "engage any potential enemy farther away from its thriving cities."
Bandow argued that Washington's interest in the region are not as immediate and urgent as China's and that China's move to establish an "offshore defense strategy" is consistent with the threat it faces in the circumstances of buildup of US military presence in its backyard.
Of course, if you look at the situation in the East China Sea region from the Western perspective, it is easy to forget the fact that the US is the outsider in the region and not China and that thus the responsibility falls first on the US as the outsider to exercise restraint.
The onus also falls on the US to justify its presence in the region and not for China to justify self-defensive measures it adopts in its own backyard.
To take for granted US claim that its presence in the region is "stabilizing" is to overlook these basic facts, even after the historical and geopolitical factors have been taken into account.
Kerry's latest statements follow a previous comment by the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in which he compared the growing tensions between Japan and China to Britain and Germany before World War I.
It also comes after Benigno Aquino of the Philippines compared China’s claims in the region to Nazi demands in the 1930s.
The recent comments by the US and its allies have raised a flurry of speculation among Chinese and Western analysts whether they could be considered hints that the US is seriously considering the option of a "limited conflict" as part of a strategy to setback or degrade China's nascent naval capabilities.
In recent times, more than ever before, US defense analysts have been urging US military to consider a detailed war plan against China.
Recently, US defense analysts told the House Armed Services' Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee that the Pentagon should embark on a major build-up in preparation for a possible conflict with China.
According to Seth Cropsey, a senior fellow at The Hudson Institute, "Chinese leaders are ambitious and they are moving toward great power status. The US is not taking this possibility as seriously as it should."
These comments from US analysts appear to underscore a growing conviction that ultimately the US would have to confront China militarily and that the earlier a conflict the better for the US that still enjoys a great naval advantage over China.
With the gap in naval military capability between the countries narrowing every day, the US military faces increasing temptations to provoke an early confrontation while Chinese capabilities are still nascent and weak.
JOHNTHOMAS DIDYMUS is based in Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, and is an Anchor for Allvoices.
Is the US trying to instigate a Japan-China proxy war? (Part Two)
Washington : DC : USA | Feb 10, 2014
By JOHNTHOMAS DIDYMUS
Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops on paradeAuthor's note: This is the second of a three-part series.
The situation in which US defense analysts are making urgent calls to the Pentagon to come up with a detailed war plan against China and build-up US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region in preparation for a possible conflict with China represents a major shift in thinking about China.
Until the end of the last century, American analysts could scoff at talk about Chinese military threat, pointing to the vast gap in military technology between US armed forces and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), widely considered in the West a less than professional force that historically served as the military arm of the Communist Party of China.
But recent developments have seen Western strategists scrambling to come up with a policy response to the burgeoning Chinese threat.
According to Daniel Blumenthal in his article "A Sino-American Proxy War?" published in Foreign Policy, the thought among Washington military analysts until recently was that the US could pursue a policy of containment by increasing military presence in the Asia-Pacific region to balance up with expanding Chinese power while actively engaging the country diplomatically in the hope that increasing economic and political interdependence will force China to integrate into the global system as a responsible stakeholder.
Yet the recent steady growth of China as a sea power shows that while Chinese planners may not necessarily be looking forward to or convinced of the inevitability of armed conflict with the US, they foresee a future in which China is able to assert its pre-eminence in the East China Sea and force the US to concede the region as China's legitimate and exclusive sphere of influence being the country's geographical backyard.
The predictable goal of any country aspiring to superpower status - as it appears the Chinese are - is to carve out a regional sphere of influence, and such goals could become very expansive in time.
Given the recent focus of Chinese planners on development of the country's naval capabilities, it has become clear to US strategists that the Chinese are ready to assert their prerogatives in the region as their capabilities grow.
The "pivot" or "rebalancing" policy of the US in the Asia-Pacific region designed to counter Chinese ambitions will inevitably result in military confrontation if both powers pursue their goals resolutely.
The circumstances in which other major allies of the US in the region, namely, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, feel threatened by growing Chinese power makes the situation even more complex and highly flammable.
It is certain in the long run of growth of China's naval capabilities that they will settle for nothing less than a concession of the East China Sea region as the backyard where they have a right of way.
Any present concession by the Chinese could only be part of a strategy to allow time for their power to mature before openly confronting the US.
The obvious strategic considerations on the part of the Chinese explain why the option of provoking a confrontation while their naval capabilities are still relatively weak should be very tempting for US defense analysts.
The stitch-in-time-saves-nine strategic logic is very compelling in the circumstances.
However, some Chinese pundits have denied the obvious strategic considerations that should cause US strategists to favor an early military confrontation with China by arguing from the perspective of those reasons why the US should not want to instigate a Japan-China proxy war.
The Chinese People's Daily analyst Ma Shikun dismisses speculations among Chinese analysts that the US is seeking to instigate a "small scale' proxy war using Japan. He argues that the US would not want to disrupt the strategic relationship with China, which involves several common interests mostly of economy and trade.
Ma Shikun cites the $500 billion annual bilateral trade between both countries, the fact that the US economy is heavily dependent on importation of cheap goods from China and that China is the biggest holder of US government securities and bonds to buttress his argument that instigating a war, even a "proxy war" with China, entails a dilemma for the US.
He also argues that the US should be unwilling to risk resurgence of Japanese militarism by helping to upgrade Japan's military to the point that it feels strong and confident to abolish its "peace constitution" to take action against China.
The historical dilemma for the US comes more sharply into focus at a time that Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears bent on renouncing Japan's "peace constitution" which he views as imposed on Japan by the US after World War Two.
Abe has said he thinks the time has come for Japan to renounce Article 9 of its Constitution which forbids Japan to wage war.
Abe's push for Japan to renounce its post-Second World War "peace constitution" is best interpreted in the context of the changing geopolitical power equation in the region. The recent surge in Japan's military spending is consistent with prediction of an emerging scenario in which the US relies on Japan to play an increasing role maintaining a balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Japanese are the United States' best bet of a capable proxy that could help contain the expanding power of China as a global sea power. The Americans should be strongly tempted to use them for that purpose.
While the US has reasons to be wary of Japan pushing towards an independent military policy for the first time since World War II, US planners would have to weigh the options between the US having to deal with an emerging Chinese power on its own or having a militarily capable Japan it can use as a regional proxy to balance power in the region.
Ultimately, the goal of the US is to block China's progress towards becoming a global sea power. Using Japan to contain the Chinese in the Asia-Pacific region reduces the risk of escalation because a conflict between Japan and China would more likely be seen as regional conflict than if the US were directly involved.
As Blumenthal notes, the long run goal of the US is to contain China in the East China Sea region and protect the Western Pacific and the US homeland from exposure to threat from a rising East Asian power.
Is the US trying to instigate a Japan-China proxy war? (Part Three)Washington : DC : USA | Feb 12, 2014
By JOHNTHOMAS DIDYMUS
Chinese naval power still nascent and vulnerableAuthor’s note: This is the final part of a three-part series.
Pentagon planners have developed a non-strategic "operational concept" called Air-Sea Battle with a multi-pronged approach embracing cyber and electronic warfare, joint naval and air operations designed to penetrate Chinese defenses and gain strike access to the land-based elements of Chinese naval firepower.
ASB is based on the idea that in the event of a limited military confrontation with the Chinese, land invasion is ruled out. The goal of containment of Chinese power would reasonably be limited to setting back expansion of the country's sea power in the Asia-Pacific region by degrading its naval assets.
This limited goal is vital to containment of Chinese military power because the navy is strategic in the projection of military power overseas.
However, the key concern in implementing ASB or any other containment strategy is to avoid escalation into a nuclear conflict and to limit the theatre of conflict.
The concern has led some strategists to propose an alternative to ASB called Offshore Control, which proposes containment of Chinese power through economic strangulation implemented as a "distant" maritime blockade.
However, as Daniel Blumenthal notes in his article for Foreign Policy, there is no reason to suppose that the Chinese leadership would consider a "war of economic attrition" as less threatening to the survival of the Communist Party than the ASB concept.
Thus, both the ASB and OC concepts could be assessed as having significant risks of escalation.
It seems, however, that Washington could guarantee a limited conflict which allows it to severely degrade Chinese naval power without risking nuclear or geographical escalation by instigating a proxy war in which Japan and China are the primary contenders with the US providing support only to the extent that is needed to achieve the goal of tipping the scale in favor of Japan.
If that is the undeclared goal of the US, what we should expect to see is Washington pushing Japan to upgrade its naval power to a level in which a conflict would require only limited contribution from the US to guarantee the objective.
Chinese naval strength is presently vulnerable and could easily be degraded through the US providing military technological assistance to the Japanese to do the job for them.
The alternative is a purely defensive posture in which the US helps to build the capacity of its allies to ward off Chinese access to their territorial waters and airspace. But in the context of the view that a military conflict between the two powers in inevitable a defensive posture only allows the Chinese time to consolidate their naval capabilities.
Yet another alternative is the US coming to terms with the inevitability of losing its position as the world's only superpower and adopting, in place of a containment policy than leans heavily on military strategy, a policy backed by a high level of commitment to economic and political engagement which seeks to accommodate the expansive surge of the new rising power and channel its energies to a new world order equilibrium.
Such policy could be pursued only with an understanding often missing in popular analysis which draws direct analogy between the geo-politics of the early 21st century and the early twentieth century.
For instance, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe amateurishly compared the growing tensions between Japan and China to Britain and Germany before World War I, while Benigno Aquino of the Philippines compared China’s claims to Nazi demands in the 1930s.
The analogies ignore the fact that the geopolitical chessboard on which 21st century statesmen plot their next moves is radically different from the way things were in early 20th century.
The political worldview which informed the unrestrained militarism of the foreign policies of Hitler and Mussolini was the direct legacy of 19th century Europe's established foreign policy culture of military expansionism.
The statesman mentality of the men who ruled Europe in the early 20th century was hardly removed from that of their 19th century predecessors for whom foreign war and conquest, extolled as the legitimate sport of great statesmen, were a matter of national prestige and pride.
Thus, to conduct an analysis of the intentions of Xi Jinping and China's territorial ambitions in terms of our understanding of Britain and Germany before the First World War, and Nazi demands in the 1930s, is gross indulgence in anachronistic thinking.
To imagine that Xi Jinping and his Communist Party colleagues are more anxious than President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party colleagues to provoke a Third World War confrontation may pander to the xenophobia inherent in human nature. But we will search and fail to find objective evidence of our assumptions about our geopolitical rivals in the real world.
For any leader with an arsenal of nuclear warheads plotting war strategy, either in Washington, Moscow or Beijing, the risk of escalation is the first issue to grapple with.
That Hitler was not constrained by considerations of the consequences of escalation when he ordered his mobile panzer units across Europe explains to some extent the escalation of his quest for Aryan lebensraum into the unrestrained fury of the Second World War.
Hitler had modeled his regime's lebensraum policy after the successful 19th-century European colonization of North America and German genocide policy in Southwest Africa, all of which seemed alright to Western Europeans until the chickens came home to roost in the ideology of "National Socialism."
When we understand that our enemies share our fears and concerns, it is easier to think clearly about how to engage them constructively.
