WORLD VIEW:There are shades of Nixon in the latest US attempts to become a major player in Asia, writes PAUL GILLESPIE
‘IF YOU are a strategic thinker in China, you do not have to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist to think that the US is trying to bandwagon Asia against China.” So says Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, in a comment on the new United States “strategic pivot” towards the Asia-Pacific region. It highlights what promises to be one of the key geopolitical trends in coming decades.
Last year Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made successive pronouncements on this shift of focus. It was woven into their positions on military spending, trade, regional security and relations with China. Obama repeatedly affirmed the US role as a Pacific power, while Clinton asserted US willingness to mediate conflicts between China and other states about mineral rights and access to the South China Sea and similar sensitive sea zones in China’s neighbourhood.
Bandwagoning in strategic thinking has to do with weaker and smaller states accommodating the most powerful one to appease it or profit from its expected victory. It is usually counterposed to balancing or allying against a threatening power to deter it. Containment has to do with preventing a hostile power expanding. It comes between detente or engagement and rollback or military attack to prevent that.
Such language has been out of fashion since the cold war conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. It has been resurrected now to describe the emerging US policy towards China and the growing importance of trans-Pacific relations for international politics in this century.
Announcing recent defence cuts Obama made it clear they will not apply in the Pacific region. Indeed he announced in November that US Marines will open a new base in Darwin, north Australia.
Think tanks close to the administration are calling for the US to declare “co-operative primacy” in the South China Sea and to build up naval forces there. “We are asserting our presence in the Pacific. We are a Pacific power,” Clinton said at the National Defense University in August, “we know we face some long-term challenges about how we are going to cope with what the rise of China means.”
These military moves have been accompanied by proposals for a Trans-Pacific Partnership on trade. It would include conditions on labour markets and currency values and notably does not include China. It therefore fits in with the developing pattern of containment, echoing complaints that China’s currency is undervalued to protect its exports and posing dilemmas for other Asian states which know China is not going away and is an indispensable economic partner for more and more of them.
Electoral calculations are not absent from this rhetoric of course. It will help on the hustings to be able to show the administration’s firmness of purpose against Republican accusations of appeasing China, notwithstanding defence cuts and the gradual pullout from Afghanistan.
Either way the temper of US debate has swung in a more confrontational direction. Chinese leaders and analysts have not been slow to spot this, even if they are divided on what exactly to make of it. Does it herald a genuinely long-term change in the US willingness to engage with China or is it better understood as a prudent repositioning of US interests in a changing world? It is probably too early to say for sure.
Normally the Chinese are cautious about such questions, unwilling to make rash judgments or take precipitate action. They too face a major political transition this year, ahead of which various party and regime factions jostle for position.
As their regional and world power grows, they are understandably concerned about security in their neighbourhood and resentful of any US or other intrusion that seems aggressive. They also know how US election cycles and military-industrial interests affect US policymaking and that it would be a mistake to draw premature conclusions. And they must understand why many Asian states would wish to see US involvement in the region maintained during such a difficult transition of power in the Pacific region.
Viewed from Europe this transition is instructive and chastening. The US tilt towards the Asia-Pacific has accelerated under Obama. He seems increasingly disenchanted by Europe’s failure to resolve its economic problems and fearful this could derail his re-election prospects. Nato seems less and less effective as a united actor from the US point of view. The EU’s nascent foreign policy positions on multilateralism, inter-regionalism and soft power cut across the US preference for bilateral dealings and hard power.
More generally this century seems certain to privilege trans-Pacific relations over the trans-Atlantic ones which dominated the world in the 20th century. Although the EU and its individual member states make great efforts to develop their Asian relations the US is seen as by far the more important player than Europe in the region.
That remains true despite China’s real interest in a more multipolar world involving the EU, within which they have alternatives to being contained by the US economically or politically. Ironically there are shades of Nixon and Kissinger’s opening to China in the 1970s here.
pegillespie@gmail.com