[blind-democracy] Tomgram: Rajan Menon, The China Missile Crisis of 2018?
- From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2017 22:38:46 -0500
Tomgram: Rajan Menon, The China Missile Crisis of 2018?
By Rajan Menon
Posted on February 12, 2017, Printed on February 13, 2017
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176242/ ;
Is President Trump Headed for a War with China?
All Options Are "On The Table"
By Rajan Menon <http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/rajanmenon>
Forget those "bad hombres
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/bad-hombres-reports-claim-t
rump-threatened-to-send-troops-to-mexico> down there" in Mexico that U.S.
troops might take out. Ignore the way National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn put Iran "on notice
<http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/02/iran-is-on-notice-what-flynn-meant-and-how-t
rump-may-miscalculate.html> " and the new president insisted
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4184166/Trump-warns-Iran-NOTICE-tha
nkful.html> , that, when it comes to that country, "nothing is off the
table." Instead, focus for a moment on something truly scary: the
possibility that Donald Trump's Washington might slide into an actual war
with the planet's rising superpower, China. No kidding. It could really
happen.
Let's start with silver-maned, stately Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump's pick
for secretary of state. Who could deny that the former ExxonMobil CEO has a
foreign minister's bearing? Trump reportedly
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-is-holding-a-governmen
t-casting-call-hes-seeking-the-look/2016/12/21/703ae8a4-c795-11e6-bf4b-2c064
d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.977f731007f5> chose him over neocon firebrand
John Bolton partly for that reason. (Among other things, Bolton was
mustachioed, something the new president apparently doesn
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/22/john-boltons-moustache-has-falle
n-foul-trumps-fashion-police/> 't care for.) But an august persona can
only do so much; it can't offset a lack of professional diplomatic
experience.
That became all-too-apparent during Tillerson's January 11th confirmation
hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was asked for his
view on the military infrastructure China has been creating on various
islands in the South China Sea, the ownership of which other Asian
countries, including Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei
claim as well. China's actions, he replied
<http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/12/politics/china-tillerson/> , were "extremely
worrisome," likening them to Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean
peninsula, an infraction for which Russia was slapped with economic
sanctions.
The then-secretary-of-state-designate -- he's since been confirmed, despite
many negative votes -- didn't, however, stop there. Evidently, he wanted to
communicate to the Chinese leadership in Beijing that the new administration
was already irked beyond measure with them. So he added, "We're going to
have to send China's leaders a clear signal: that, first, the island
building stops and, second, your access to those islands is not going to be
allowed." Functionally, that fell little short of being an announcement of
a future act of war, since not allowing "access" to those islands would
clearly involve military moves. In what amounted to a
there's-a-new-sheriff-in-town warning, he then doubled down yet again,
insisting, slightly incoherently (in the tradition of his new boss) that
"the failure of a response has allowed them to just keep pushing the
envelope on this."
All right, so maybe a novice had a bad day. Maybe the
secretary-of-state-to-be simply ad-libbed and misspoke... whatever. If so,
you might have expected a later clarification from him or from someone on
the Trump national security team anyway.
That didn't happen; instead, that team stuck to its guns. White House Press
Secretary Sean Spicer made no effort to add nuance to, let alone walk back,
Tillerson's remarks. During his first official press briefing on January
23rd, Spicer declared
<http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/23/spicer-trump-will-challenge-china-in-the-
south-china-sea-to-defend-us-interests/> that the United States "is going
to make sure we defend our interests there" -- in the South China Sea, that
is -- and that "if those islands are in fact in international waters and not
part of China proper, then yes, we are going to make sure that we defend
international territories from being taken over by one country."
And what of Trump's own views on the island controversy? Never one to pass
up an opportunity for hyperbole, during the presidential campaign he swore
<http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/04/donald-trump
/donald-trump-weighs-chinas-island-building-south-c/> that, on those tiny
islands, China was building "a military fortress the likes of which the
world has not seen." As it happened, he wasn't speaking about, say, the
forces that Hitler massed for the ill-fated Operation Barbarossa, launched
in June 1941 with the aim of crushing the Red Army and the Soviet Union, or
those deployed for the June 1944 Normandy landing, which sealed Nazi
Germany's fate. When applied to what China has been up to in the South
China Sea, his statement fell instantly into the not-yet-named category of
"alternative facts."
Candidate Trump also let it be known that he wouldn't allow Beijing to get
away with such cheekiness on his watch. Why had the Chinese engaged in
military construction on the islands? Trump had a simple answer (as he
invariably does): China "has no respect for our president and no respect for
our country." The implication was evident. Things would be different once
he settled into the White House and made America great again. Then -- it
was easy enough to conclude -- China had better watch out.
Standard campaign bombast? Well, Trump hasn't changed his tune a bit since
being elected. On December 4th, using (of course!) his Twitter
<https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/805539770864693253?lang=en>
account, he blasted Beijing for having built "a massive military complex in
the middle of the South China Sea." And it's safe to assume that he signed
off on Spicer's combative comments as well.
In short, his administration has already drawn a red line -- but in the way
a petulant child might with a crayon. During and after the campaign he made
much of his determination to regain the respect he claims the U.S. has lost
in the world, notably from adversaries like China. The danger here is that,
in dealing with that country, Trump could, as is typical, make it all about
himself, all about "winning," one of his most beloved words, and disaster
might follow.
Whose Islands?
A military clash between Trump-led America and a China led by President Xi
Jinping? Understanding how it might happen requires a brief detour to the
place where it's most likely to occur: the South China Sea. Our first task:
to understand China's position on that body of water and the islands it
contains, as well as the nature of Beijing's military projects there. So
brace yourself for some necessary detail.
As Marina Tsirbas, a former diplomat now at the Australian National
University's National Security College, explains
<http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/what-does-the-nine-dash-line-actually-mean/>
, Beijing's written and verbal statements on the South China Sea lend
themselves to two different interpretations. The Chinese government's
position boils down to something like this: "We own everything -- the
waters, islands and reefs, marine resources, and energy and mineral deposits
-- within the Nine-Dash Line." That demarcation line
<http://time.com/4412191/nine-dash-line-9-south-china-sea/> , which
incidentally has had ten
<http://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-ignore-chinas-nine-dash-line-1
7071> dashes, and sometimes eleven, originally appeared in 1947 maps of the
Republic of China, the Nationalist government that would soon flee to the
island of Taiwan leaving the Chinese Communists in charge of the mainland.
When Mao Ze Dong and his associates established the People's Republic, they
retained that Nationalist map and the demarcation line that went with it,
which just happened to enclose virtually all
<http://www.economist.com/news/china/21702527-xi-jinping-tries-contain-publi
c-fury-over-south-china-sea-my-nationalism-and-dont-you?zid=306&ah=1b164dbd4
3b0cb27ba0d4c3b12a5e227> of the South China Sea, claiming sovereign rights.
This stance -- think of it as Beijing's hard line on the subject -- raises
instant questions about other countries' navigation and overflight rights
through that much-used region. In essence, do they have any and, if so, will
Beijing alone be the one to define what those are? And will those
definitions start to change as China becomes ever more powerful? These are
hardly trivial concerns, given that about $5 trillion
<http://www.cfr.org/asia-and-pacific/armed-clash-south-china-sea/p27883>
worth of goods pass through the South China Sea annually.
Then there's what might be called Beijing's softer line, based on rights
accorded by the legal concepts of the territorial sea
<http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part2.htm>
and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Under the U.N. Convention on the Law
of the Sea (UNCLOS), which took effect in 1994 and has been signed by 167
states (including China but not the United States), a country has sovereign
control within 12 nautical miles of its coast as well as of land formations
in that perimeter visible at high tide. But other countries have the right
of "innocent passage." The EEZ goes further. It provides a rightful
claimant control over access to fishing, as well as seabed and subsoil
natural resources, within "an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial
sea" extending 200 nautical miles, while ensuring other states' freedom of
passage by air and sea. UNCLOS
<http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part5.htm>
also gives a state with an EEZ control over "the establishment and use of
artificial islands, installations, and structures" within that zone -- an
important provision at our present moment.
What makes all of this so much more complicated is that many of the islands
and reefs in the South China Sea that provide the basis for defining China's
EEZ are also claimed by other countries under the terms of UNCLOS. That, of
course, immediately raises questions about the legality of Beijing's
military construction projects <https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42784.pdf> in
that watery expanse on islands, atolls, and strips of land it's dredging
into existence, as well as its claims to seabed energy resources, fishing
rights, and land reclamation rights there -- to say nothing about its
willingness to seize some of them by force, rival claims be damned.
Moreover, figuring out which of these two positions -- hard or soft -- China
embraces at any moment is tricky indeed. Beijing, for instance, insists
that it upholds freedom of navigation and overflight rights in the Sea, but
it has also said <https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42784.pdf> that these rights
don't apply to warships and military aircraft. In recent years its
warplanes have intercepted
<https://www.ft.com/content/6cd8142c-1d70-11e6-a7bc-ee846770ec15> , and at
close quarters, American military aircraft flying outside Chinese
territorial waters in the same region. Similarly, in 2015
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/asia/us-china-south-china-sea/> , Chinese
aircraft and ships followed and issued warnings to an American warship off
Subi Reef
<http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/chinese-outpost-on-subi-reef/view/googl
e/> in the Spratly Islands, which both China and Vietnam claim in their
entirety. This past December, its Navy seized, but later returned, an
underwater drone the American naval ship Bowditch had been operating near
the coast of the Philippines.
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199384878/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>
Description: menonconceitThere were similar incidents in 2000, 2001, 2002,
2009, 2013, and 2014. In the second of these episodes, a Chinese fighter
jet collided
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/02/world/us-plane-in-china-after-it-collides
-with-chinese-jet.html> with a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane, which had
a crew of 24 on board, less than 70 miles off Hainan island, forcing it to
make an emergency landing in China and creating a tense standoff between
Beijing and Washington. The Chinese detained the crew for 11 days. They
disassembled the EP-3, returning it three months later in pieces.
Such muscle flexing in the South China Sea isn't new. China has long been
tough on its weaker neighbors in those waters. Back in 1974
<https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/7b5ec8a0-cc48-4d9b-b558-a4f1cf92e7b8/Th
e1974ParacelsSeaBattle.aspx> , for instance, its forces ejected South
Vietnamese troops from parts of the Paracel/Xisha islands that Beijing
claimed but did not yet control. China has also backed up its claim to the
Spratly/Nansha islands (which Taiwan, Vietnam, and other regional countries
reject) with air and naval patrols, tough talk, and more. In 1988
<http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1192472/spratly-islands-dispute-defin
es-china-vietnam-relations-25-years-after> , it forcibly occupied the
Vietnamese-controlled Johnson Reef, securing control over the first of what
would eventually become seven possessions in the Spratlys.
Vietnam has not been the only Southeast Asian country to receive such rough
treatment. China and the Philippines both claim ownership of Panatag
(Scarborough) Shoal/Huangyang Island, located
<https://www.google.com/search?q=scarborough+shoal+map&espv=2&biw=1432&bih=7
34&tbm=isch&imgil=97LeBrIvCCiSsM%3A%3BnBPk9UkPinC6mM%3Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.
com%2Fnews%2Fworld-asia-33518673&source=iu&pf=m&fir=97LeBrIvCCiSsM%3A%2CnBPk
9UkPinC6mM%2C_&usg=__bmEVZIXZmsgpcFEaF6bcA0l9Xys%3D&dpr=2&ved=0ahUKEwiuj7jUy
_7RAhWHq1QKHbynDcMQyjcIOQ&ei=rw6aWO57h9fSArzPtpgM#imgrc=97LeBrIvCCiSsM:>
124 nautical miles off Luzon Island in the Philippines. In 2012, Beijing
simply seized
<http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/learning-the-lessons-scarborough-ree
f-9442> it, having already ejected Manila from Panganiban Reef (aka
Mischief Reef), about 129 nautical miles from the Philippines' Palawan
Island, in 1995 <file:///\\Users\rajanmenon\Downloads\ADA309432.pdf> . In
2016, when an international arbitration tribunal upheld
<https://pca-cpa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/175/2016/07/PH-CN-20160712-Awa
rd.pdf> Manila's position on Mischief Reef and Scarborough Shoal, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry sniffed
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/world/asia/south-china-sea-hague-ruling-
philippines.html?_r=0> that "the decision is invalid and has no binding
force." Chinese president Xi Jinping added
<https://www.ft.com/content/3cdcbf42-4814-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab> for good
measure that China's claims to the South China Sea stretched back to
"ancient times."
Then there's China's military construction
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-has-be
en-building-in-the-south-china-sea-2016.html> work in the area, which
includes the building of full-scale artificial islands, as well as harbors,
military airfields, storage facilities, and hangars reinforced to protect
military aircraft. In addition, the Chinese have installed radar systems,
anti-aircraft missiles, and anti-missile defense systems on some of these
islands.
These, then, are the projects that the Trump administration says it will
stop. But China's conduct in the South China Sea leaves little doubt about
its determination to hold onto what it has and continue its activities. The
Chinese leadership has made this clear
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-southchinasea-idUSKBN1572M4>
since Donald Trump's election, and the state-run press has struck a
similarly defiant note, drawing crude red lines of its own. For example,
the Global Times, a nationalist newspaper, mocked
<http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1028568.shtml> Trump's pretensions and
issued a doomsday warning: "The U.S. has no absolute power to dominate the
South China Sea. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear strategies if he
wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories."
Were the administration to follow its threatening talk with military action,
the Global Times added ominously, "The two sides had better prepare for a
military clash." Although the Chinese leadership hasn't been anywhere near
as bombastic, top officials have made it clear that they won't yield an inch
on the South China Sea, that disputes over territories are matters for China
and its neighbors to settle, and that Washington had best butt out
<http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-25/china-tells-trump-to-stay-out-of-sout
h-china-sea-dispute/8212246> .
True, as the acolytes of a "unipolar" world remind us, China's military
spending amounts to barely more than a quarter
<http://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.asp> of
Washington's and U.S. naval and air forces are far more advanced
<https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-f
uture-superpower> and lethal than their Chinese equivalents. However,
although there certainly is a debate about the legal validity and historical
accuracy of China's territorial claims, given the increasingly acrimonious
relationship between Washington and Beijing the more strategically salient
point may be that these territories, thousands of miles from the U.S.
mainland, mean so much more to China than they do to the United States. By
now, they are inextricably bound up with its national identity and pride,
and with powerful historical and nationalistic memories -- with, that is, a
sense that, after nearly two centuries of humiliation at the hands of the
West, China is now a rising global power that can no longer be pushed
around.
Behind such sentiments lies steel. By buying some $30 billion
<http://www.theasanforum.org/evolution-of-sino-russian-defense-cooperation-s
ince-the-cold-war/> in advanced Russian armaments since the early 1990s and
developing the capacity to build advanced weaponry of its own, China has
methodically acquired the military means, and devised a strategy
<https://www.usnwc.edu/Lucent/OpenPdf.aspx?id=95> , to inflict serious
losses on the American navy in any clash in the South China Sea, where
geography serves as its ally. Beijing may, in the end, lose a showdown
there, but rest assured that it would exact a heavy price before that. What
sort of "victory" would that be?
If the fighting starts, it will be tough for the presidents of either
country to back down. Xi Jinping, like Trump, presents himself as a tough
guy
<http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/what-west-should-know-about-xi
-jinping-china-s-most-powerful-leader-mao> , sure to trounce his enemies at
home and abroad. Retaining that image requires that he not bend when it
comes to defending China's land and honor. He faces another problem as
well. Nationalism long ago sidelined Maoism in his country. As a result,
were he and his colleagues to appear pusillanimous in the face of a Trumpian
challenge, they would risk losing their legitimacy and potentially bringing
their people onto the streets (something that can happen quickly in the age
of social media). That's a particularly forbidding thought in what is
arguably the most rebellious
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175386/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_are_we_still_
on_an_imperial_planet/> land in the historical record. In such
circumstances, the leadership's abiding conviction that it can calibrate the
public's nationalism to serve the Communist Party's purposes without letting
it get out of hand may prove delusional.
Certainly, the Party understands the danger that runaway nationalism could
pose to its authority. Its paper, the People's Daily, condemned the
"irrational patriotism
<http://www.economist.com/news/china/21702527-xi-jinping-tries-contain-publi
c-fury-over-south-china-sea-my-nationalism-and-dont-you?zid=306&ah=1b164dbd4
3b0cb27ba0d4c3b12a5e227> " that manifested itself in social media forums and
street protests after the recent international tribunal's verdict favoring
the Philippines. And that's hardly the first time a foreign policy fracas
has excited public passions. Think, for example, of the anti-Japanese
demonstrations that swept the country in 2005, provoked by Japanese school
textbooks that sanitized that country's World War II-era atrocities in
China. Those protests spread to many cities
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/17/china.japan> , and the
numbers were sizeable with more than 10,000
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58567-2005Apr16.html> angry
demonstrators on the streets of Shanghai alone. At first, the leadership
encouraged the rallies, but it got nervous as things started to spin out of
control.
"We're Going to War in the South China Sea..."
Facing off against China, President Trump could find himself in a similar
predicament, having so emphasized his toughness, his determination to regain
America's lost respect and make the country great again. The bigger
problem, however, will undoubtedly be his own narcissism and his obsession
with winning, not to mention his inability to resist sending incendiary
messages via Twitter. Just try to imagine for a moment how a president who
blows his stack during a getting-to-know-you phone call
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/no-gday-mate-on-call
-with-australian-pm-trump-badgers-and-brags/2017/02/01/88a3bfb0-e8bf-11e6-80
c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html?utm_term=.5c9e3b2e912e#comments> with the prime
minister of Australia, a close ally, is likely to conduct himself in a
confrontation with a country he's labeled a prime adversary.
In the event of a military crisis between China and the United States,
neither side may want an escalation, to say nothing of a nuclear war. Yet
Trump's threats to impose 45%
<http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/15/just-how-badly-could-trumps-threatened-45-ta
riff-hurt-china.html> tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. and his
repeated condemnation of China as a "currency manipulator
<http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-china-currency-20161229-story.h
tml> " and stealer
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-china-idUSKBN0OX0T8201
50617> of American jobs have already produced a poisonous atmosphere
between the world's two most powerful countries. And it was made worse by
his December phone conversation
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/308559-trump-makes-history
-with-phone-call-to-taiwan-leader> with Taiwan's president, Tsai Ing-wen,
which created doubts
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/12/donald-trump-questions-us-c
ommitment-to-one-china-policy> about his commitment to the One China policy
the United States has adhered to since 1972. The Chinese authorities
apparently made it clear to the White House that there couldn't even be a
first-time phone call to Xi unless the new president agreed to stick with
that policy. During a conversation with the Chinese president on February
9th, Trump reportedly
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/trump-agrees-to-honor-one
-china-policy-in-call-to-xi-jinping/2017/02/10/ea6e7ece-ef4a-11e6-9973-c5efb
7ccfb0d_story.html?utm_term=.262fa0d658a4> provided that essential
assurance. Given the new American president's volatility, however, Beijing
will be playing close attention to his words and actions, even his symbolic
ones, related to Taiwan.
Sooner or later, if Trump doesn't also dial down the rest of his rhetoric on
China, its leaders will surely ratchet up theirs, thereby aggravating the
situation further. So far, they've restrained themselves in order to figure
Trump out -- not an easy task even for Americans -- and in hopes that his
present way of dealing with the world might be replaced with something more
conventional and recognizable. Hope, as they say, springs eternal, but as
of now, in repeatedly insisting that China must do as he says, Trump and his
surrogates have inserted themselves and the country into a complicated
territorial dispute far from America's shores. The hubris of Washington
acting as the keeper of world order, but regularly breaking the rules as it
wishes, whether by invading Iraq in 2003 or making open use of torture and a
global network of secret prisons, is an aspect of American behavior long
obvious to foreign powers. It looks to be the essence of Trumpism, too,
even if its roots are old indeed.
Don't dismiss the importance of heated exchanges between Washington and
Beijing in the wake of Trump's election. The political atmosphere between
rival powers, especially those with massive arsenals, can matter a great
deal when they face off in a crisis. Pernicious stereotypes and mutual
mistrust only increase the odds that crucial information will be
misinterpreted in the heat of the moment because of entrenched beliefs that
are immune to contrary evidence, misperceptions, worst-case calculations,
and up-the-ante reactions. In academic jargon, these constitute the
ingredients for a classic conflict spiral
<http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737512.001.
0001/acprof-9780199737512-chapter-17> . In such a situation, events take
control of leaders, producing outcomes that none of them sought. Not for
nothing during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 did President John Kennedy
look to <https://fas.org/pir-pubs/presidents-message-nuclear-guns-august/>
Barbara Tuchman's book, Guns of August -- a gripping account of how Europe
slipped and slid into a disastrous world war in 1914.
There has been lots of anxiety about the malign effects that Donald Trump's
temperament and beliefs could have domestically, and for good reason. But
in domestic politics, institutions and laws, civic organizations, the press,
and public protests can serve, however imperfectly, as countervailing
forces. In international politics, crises can erupt suddenly and unfold
rapidly -- and the checks on rash behavior by American presidents are much
weaker. They have considerable leeway to use military force (having
repeatedly circumvented the War Powers Act). They can manipulate public
opinion from the Bully Pulpit and shape the flow of information. (Think back
to the Iraq war.) Congress typically rallies reflexively around the flag
during international crises. In such moments, citizens' criticism or mass
protest invites charges of disloyalty.
This is why the brewing conflict in the South China Sea and rising
animosities on both sides could produce something resembling a
Cuban-Missile-Crisis-style situation -- with the United States lacking the
geographical advantage this time around. If you think that a war between
China and the United States couldn't possibly happen, you might have a point
in ordinary times, which these distinctly aren't.
Take the latest news on Stephen Bannon, formerly the executive chairman of
the alt-right publication Breitbart News and now President Trump's chief
political strategist. He has even been granted the right to sit in on every
meeting of the National Security Council and its Principals Committee
<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/the-trump-national-sec
urity-council-an-analysis/514910/> , the highest inter-agency forum for
day-to-day national security deliberations. He will be privy to meetings
that, according to a directive
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memoran
dum-organization-national-security-council-and> signed by Trump, even the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national
intelligence may not join unless "issues pertaining to their
responsibilities and expertise will be discussed." Calling this a break with
past practice would be an understatement of the first order.
So Bannon's views, once of interest only to a fringe group of Americans, now
matter greatly. Here's what he said last March about China in a radio
interview <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdqoUSTgfmA> : "We're going to
war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren't we? There's no doubt
about that. They're taking their sandbars and making basically stationary
aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the
United States in front of our face -- and you understand how important face
is -- and say it's an ancient territorial sea."
Think of this as Bannon's version of apocalyptic prophecy. Then consider
the volatility of the new president he advises. Then focus on the larger
message: these are not ordinary times. Most Americans probably don't even
know that there is a South China Sea. Count on one thing, though: they will
soon.
Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176230/tomgram%3A_rajan_menon,_the_iranian_
connection_in_the_age_of_trump/> regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer
Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of
New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman
Institute of War and Peace Studies. He is the author, most recently, of The
Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199384878/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> .
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter <https://twitter.com/TomDispatch> and join us
on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch> . Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467244/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> , as
well as Nick Turse's Next Time They
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608466485/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> 'll Come
to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> .
Copyright 2017 Rajan Menon
C 2017 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176242/
Tomgram: Rajan Menon, The China Missile Crisis of 2018?
By Rajan Menon
Posted on February 12, 2017, Printed on February 13, 2017
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176242/ ;
Consider it an irony or simply a reality of our moment, but these days
Donald ("America First") Trump is looking ever less like an old-fashioned,
pre-World War II isolationist. In a mere three-plus weeks in office, he's
managed to mix it up royally with much of the rest of the planet. He
threatened to send American troops into Mexico (hey, it was a joke, just
lighthearted banter
<http://time.com/4657794/donald-trump-bad-hombres-pena-nieto-phone-call/>
!); he insulted the Prime Minister of Australia by shouting at and hanging
up on him ("fatigue was setting in
<http://www.salon.com/2017/02/02/a-disaster-down-under-president-trump-hangs
-up-on-australias-prime-minister-after-heated-exchange-over-refugee-program/
" and anyway maybe he thought it was Austria!); he threatened
<
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/spicer-trump-iran-military-option>
Iran with everything but the kitchen sink (which he evidently couldn
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/us/politics/trump-white-house-aides-stra
tegy.html> 't find in the new, under-inhabited White House); he insulted
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/world/asia/travel-ban-drives-wedge-betwe
en-iraqi-soldiers-and-americans.html> Iraq by banning its citizens from
visiting the land that had invaded and occupied them and essentially
dynamited their country; he insulted
<
http://www.dw.com/en/donald-trump-slams-angela-merkels-refugee-policy/a-371
41791> German Prime Minister Angela Merkel for her handling of the refugee
crisis and may still be playing with the idea of appointing an ambassador to
the European Union who would like to see
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/world/europe/trump-european-union.html>
it go the way of the old Soviet Union. He put in place the Muslim ban that
wasn
<
http://www.mediaite.com/online/despite-spicers-claims-trump-suggests-the-wo
rd-ban-is-appropriate-call-it-what-you-want/> 't a ban on immigrants and
visitors from seven largely Muslim lands -- before an obviously Islam-loving
so-called judge
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-travel-ban-legal-win-234634>
in San Francisco (natch!) temporarily banned it. After being played
<
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-yemen-raid-ag
ree-to-policy-barack-obama-would-not-do-james-matthis-qassim-al-rimi-a756686
1.html> like a fiddle by military officials who told him that President
Obama would never have had the guts to order such a raid -- great
presidential button-pushing, guys! -- he green-lighted a disastrous Special
Operations mission in Yemen in which the raiders didn
<
http://nypost.com/2017/02/06/deadly-yemen-raid-missed-its-main-al-qaeda-tar
get/> 't get their guy (but did get a long available
<
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/yemen-raid-videos/> terror video),
while one American and up to 30
<
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-missed-target
-al-qaeda-leader-yemen-raid-a7566211.html> civilians, including children,
died. (The Yemeni government, possibly also angered by being put on Trump's
list of banned countries, has now banned
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/world/middleeast/yemen-special-operation
s-missions.html> such raids in its country, or not
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/world/middleeast/yemen-raid-american-mil
itary.html> .) And to give Trump total credit, he staunchly defended the
honor of the American people, as he had always promised he would. When Bill
O'Reilly, in a pre-Super Bowl interview, called Russian President Vladimir
Putin a "killer" without offering a single kind, offsetting word of praise
for the United States, the president promptly insisted that the Russians had
no monopoly on killers in high places, not on an America First planet. He
shot back
<
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/04/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin/> :
"There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?" Exactly,
Donald. We kill with the best of them!
According to recent research by the Global Impact Institute (GII), in his
first 21 days in office, President Trump only missed messing with 13 of the
190-plus nations on the planet, an oversight he's undoubtedly planning to
rectify in week four. (Okay, okay, the GII only operates inside my brain,
but take my word for it, it's no less accurate for that.) And the president
has obviously been saving the best for last, despite a recent molifying
gesture
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/world/asia/donald-trump-china-xi-jinping
-letter.html> . I'm talking, of course, about that ominously rising power,
China. No other country offers such a mix-it-up opportunity for global
economic chaos, outright war, and future Armageddon. But let
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176230/tomgram%3A_rajan_menon,_the_iranian_
connection_in_the_age_of_trump/> TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon, author of
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199384878/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> The
Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention, fill in the details on a country that
gives Trump the chance to replay a reel of best of John F. Kennedy moments
from the Bay of Pigs to the Cuban Missile Crisis
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175605/tomgram%3A_noam_chomsky,_%22the_most
_dangerous_moment,%22_50_years_later/> -- and believe you me, if Donald
Trump had been there, Cuba might not have been. Tom
Is President Trump Headed for a War with China?
All Options Are "On The Table"
By Rajan Menon <
http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/rajanmenon>
Forget those "bad hombres
<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/bad-hombres-reports-claim-t
rump-threatened-to-send-troops-to-mexico> down there" in Mexico that U.S.
troops might take out. Ignore the way National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn put Iran "on notice
<
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/02/iran-is-on-notice-what-flynn-meant-and-how-t
rump-may-miscalculate.html> " and the new president insisted
<
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4184166/Trump-warns-Iran-NOTICE-tha
nkful.html> , that, when it comes to that country, "nothing is off the
table." Instead, focus for a moment on something truly scary: the
possibility that Donald Trump's Washington might slide into an actual war
with the planet's rising superpower, China. No kidding. It could really
happen.
Let's start with silver-maned, stately Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump's pick
for secretary of state. Who could deny that the former ExxonMobil CEO has a
foreign minister's bearing? Trump reportedly
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-is-holding-a-governmen
t-casting-call-hes-seeking-the-look/2016/12/21/703ae8a4-c795-11e6-bf4b-2c064
d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.977f731007f5> chose him over neocon firebrand
John Bolton partly for that reason. (Among other things, Bolton was
mustachioed, something the new president apparently doesn
<
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/22/john-boltons-moustache-has-falle
n-foul-trumps-fashion-police/> 't care for.) But an august persona can only
do so much; it can't offset a lack of professional diplomatic experience.
That became all-too-apparent during Tillerson's January 11th confirmation
hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was asked for his
view on the military infrastructure China has been creating on various
islands in the South China Sea, the ownership of which other Asian
countries, including Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei
claim as well. China's actions, he replied
<
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/12/politics/china-tillerson/> , were "extremely
worrisome," likening them to Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean
peninsula, an infraction for which Russia was slapped with economic
sanctions.
The then-secretary-of-state-designate -- he's since been confirmed, despite
many negative votes -- didn't, however, stop there. Evidently, he wanted to
communicate to the Chinese leadership in Beijing that the new administration
was already irked beyond measure with them. So he added, "We're going to
have to send China's leaders a clear signal: that, first, the island
building stops and, second, your access to those islands is not going to be
allowed." Functionally, that fell little short of being an announcement of a
future act of war, since not allowing "access" to those islands would
clearly involve military moves. In what amounted to a
there's-a-new-sheriff-in-town warning, he then doubled down yet again,
insisting, slightly incoherently (in the tradition of his new boss) that
"the failure of a response has allowed them to just keep pushing the
envelope on this."
All right, so maybe a novice had a bad day. Maybe the
secretary-of-state-to-be simply ad-libbed and misspoke... whatever. If so,
you might have expected a later clarification from him or from someone on
the Trump national security team anyway.
That didn't happen; instead, that team stuck to its guns. White House Press
Secretary Sean Spicer made no effort to add nuance to, let alone walk back,
Tillerson's remarks. During his first official press briefing on January
23rd, Spicer declared
<
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/23/spicer-trump-will-challenge-china-in-the-
south-china-sea-to-defend-us-interests/> that the United States "is going
to make sure we defend our interests there" -- in the South China Sea, that
is -- and that "if those islands are in fact in international waters and not
part of China proper, then yes, we are going to make sure that we defend
international territories from being taken over by one country."
And what of Trump's own views on the island controversy? Never one to pass
up an opportunity for hyperbole, during the presidential campaign he swore
<
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/04/donald-trump
/donald-trump-weighs-chinas-island-building-south-c/> that, on those tiny
islands, China was building "a military fortress the likes of which the
world has not seen." As it happened, he wasn't speaking about, say, the
forces that Hitler massed for the ill-fated Operation Barbarossa, launched
in June 1941 with the aim of crushing the Red Army and the Soviet Union, or
those deployed for the June 1944 Normandy landing, which sealed Nazi
Germany's fate. When applied to what China has been up to in the South China
Sea, his statement fell instantly into the not-yet-named category of
"alternative facts."
Candidate Trump also let it be known that he wouldn't allow Beijing to get
away with such cheekiness on his watch. Why had the Chinese engaged in
military construction on the islands? Trump had a simple answer (as he
invariably does): China "has no respect for our president and no respect for
our country." The implication was evident. Things would be different once he
settled into the White House and made America great again. Then -- it was
easy enough to conclude -- China had better watch out.
Standard campaign bombast? Well, Trump hasn't changed his tune a bit since
being elected. On December 4th, using (of course!) his Twitter
<
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/805539770864693253?lang=en>
account, he blasted Beijing for having built "a massive military complex in
the middle of the South China Sea." And it's safe to assume that he signed
off on Spicer's combative comments as well.
In short, his administration has already drawn a red line -- but in the way
a petulant child might with a crayon. During and after the campaign he made
much of his determination to regain the respect he claims the U.S. has lost
in the world, notably from adversaries like China. The danger here is that,
in dealing with that country, Trump could, as is typical, make it all about
himself, all about "winning," one of his most beloved words, and disaster
might follow.
Whose Islands?
A military clash between Trump-led America and a China led by President Xi
Jinping? Understanding how it might happen requires a brief detour to the
place where it's most likely to occur: the South China Sea. Our first task:
to understand China's position on that body of water and the islands it
contains, as well as the nature of Beijing's military projects there. So
brace yourself for some necessary detail.
As Marina Tsirbas, a former diplomat now at the Australian National
University's National Security College, explains
<
http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/what-does-the-nine-dash-line-actually-mean/>
, Beijing's written and verbal statements on the South China Sea lend
themselves to two different interpretations. The Chinese government's
position boils down to something like this: "We own everything -- the
waters, islands and reefs, marine resources, and energy and mineral deposits
-- within the Nine-Dash Line." That demarcation line
<
http://time.com/4412191/nine-dash-line-9-south-china-sea/> , which
incidentally has had ten
<
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-ignore-chinas-nine-dash-line-1
7071> dashes, and sometimes eleven, originally appeared in 1947 maps of the
Republic of China, the Nationalist government that would soon flee to the
island of Taiwan leaving the Chinese Communists in charge of the mainland.
When Mao Ze Dong and his associates established the People's Republic, they
retained that Nationalist map and the demarcation line that went with it,
which just happened to enclose virtually all
<
http://www.economist.com/news/china/21702527-xi-jinping-tries-contain-publi
c-fury-over-south-china-sea-my-nationalism-and-dont-you?zid=306&ah=1b164dbd4
3b0cb27ba0d4c3b12a5e227> of the South China Sea, claiming sovereign rights.
This stance -- think of it as Beijing's hard line on the subject -- raises
instant questions about other countries' navigation and overflight rights
through that much-used region. In essence, do they have any and, if so, will
Beijing alone be the one to define what those are? And will those
definitions start to change as China becomes ever more powerful? These are
hardly trivial concerns, given that about $5 trillion
<
http://www.cfr.org/asia-and-pacific/armed-clash-south-china-sea/p27883>
worth of goods pass through the South China Sea annually.
Then there's what might be called Beijing's softer line, based on rights
accorded by the legal concepts of the territorial sea
<
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part2.htm>
and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Under the U.N. Convention on the Law
of the Sea (UNCLOS), which took effect in 1994 and has been signed by 167
states (including China but not the United States), a country has sovereign
control within 12 nautical miles of its coast as well as of land formations
in that perimeter visible at high tide. But other countries have the right
of "innocent passage." The EEZ goes further. It provides a rightful claimant
control over access to fishing, as well as seabed and subsoil natural
resources, within "an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea"
extending 200 nautical miles, while ensuring other states' freedom of
passage by air and sea. UNCLOS
<
http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part5.htm>
also gives a state with an EEZ control over "the establishment and use of
artificial islands, installations, and structures" within that zone -- an
important provision at our present moment.
What makes all of this so much more complicated is that many of the islands
and reefs in the South China Sea that provide the basis for defining China's
EEZ are also claimed by other countries under the terms of UNCLOS. That, of
course, immediately raises questions about the legality of Beijing's
military construction projects <
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42784.pdf> in
that watery expanse on islands, atolls, and strips of land it's dredging
into existence, as well as its claims to seabed energy resources, fishing
rights, and land reclamation rights there -- to say nothing about its
willingness to seize some of them by force, rival claims be damned.
Moreover, figuring out which of these two positions -- hard or soft -- China
embraces at any moment is tricky indeed. Beijing, for instance, insists that
it upholds freedom of navigation and overflight rights in the Sea, but it
has also said <
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42784.pdf> that these rights
don't apply to warships and military aircraft. In recent years its warplanes
have intercepted
<
https://www.ft.com/content/6cd8142c-1d70-11e6-a7bc-ee846770ec15> , and at
close quarters, American military aircraft flying outside Chinese
territorial waters in the same region. Similarly, in 2015
<
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/asia/us-china-south-china-sea/> , Chinese
aircraft and ships followed and issued warnings to an American warship off
Subi Reef
<
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/chinese-outpost-on-subi-reef/view/googl
e/> in the Spratly Islands, which both China and Vietnam claim in their
entirety. This past December, its Navy seized, but later returned, an
underwater drone the American naval ship Bowditch had been operating near
the coast of the Philippines.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199384878/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20https://ww
w.amazon.com/dp/0199384878/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20There were similar
incidents in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009, 2013, and 2014. In the second of these
episodes, a Chinese fighter jet collided
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/02/world/us-plane-in-china-after-it-collides
-with-chinese-jet.html> with a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane, which had
a crew of 24 on board, less than 70 miles off Hainan island, forcing it to
make an emergency landing in China and creating a tense standoff between
Beijing and Washington. The Chinese detained the crew for 11 days. They
disassembled the EP-3, returning it three months later in pieces.
Such muscle flexing in the South China Sea isn't new. China has long been
tough on its weaker neighbors in those waters. Back in 1974
<
https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/7b5ec8a0-cc48-4d9b-b558-a4f1cf92e7b8/Th
e1974ParacelsSeaBattle.aspx> , for instance, its forces ejected South
Vietnamese troops from parts of the Paracel/Xisha islands that Beijing
claimed but did not yet control. China has also backed up its claim to the
Spratly/Nansha islands (which Taiwan, Vietnam, and other regional countries
reject) with air and naval patrols, tough talk, and more. In 1988
<
http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1192472/spratly-islands-dispute-defin
es-china-vietnam-relations-25-years-after> , it forcibly occupied the
Vietnamese-controlled Johnson Reef, securing control over the first of what
would eventually become seven possessions in the Spratlys.
Vietnam has not been the only Southeast Asian country to receive such rough
treatment. China and the Philippines both claim ownership of Panatag
(Scarborough) Shoal/Huangyang Island, located
<
https://www.google.com/search?q=scarborough+shoal+map&espv=2&biw=1432&bih=7
34&tbm=isch&imgil=97LeBrIvCCiSsM%3A%3BnBPk9UkPinC6mM%3Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.
com%2Fnews%2Fworld-asia-33518673&source=iu&pf=m&fir=97LeBrIvCCiSsM%3A%2CnBPk
9UkPinC6mM%2C_&usg=__bmEVZIXZmsgpcFEaF6bcA0l9Xys%3D&dpr=2&ved=0ahUKEwiuj7jUy
_7RAhWHq1QKHbynDcMQyjcIOQ&ei=rw6aWO57h9fSArzPtpgM#imgrc=97LeBrIvCCiSsM:>
124 nautical miles off Luzon Island in the Philippines. In 2012, Beijing
simply seized
<
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/learning-the-lessons-scarborough-ree
f-9442> it, having already ejected Manila from Panganiban Reef (aka
Mischief Reef), about 129 nautical miles from the Philippines' Palawan
Island, in 1995. In 2016, when an international arbitration tribunal upheld
<
https://pca-cpa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/175/2016/07/PH-CN-20160712-Awa
rd.pdf> Manila's position on Mischief Reef and Scarborough Shoal, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry sniffed
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/world/asia/south-china-sea-hague-ruling-
philippines.html?_r=0> that "the decision is invalid and has no binding
force." Chinese president Xi Jinping added
<
https://www.ft.com/content/3cdcbf42-4814-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab> for good
measure that China's claims to the South China Sea stretched back to
"ancient times."
Then there's China's military construction
<
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-has-be
en-building-in-the-south-china-sea-2016.html> work in the area, which
includes the building of full-scale artificial islands, as well as harbors,
military airfields, storage facilities, and hangars reinforced to protect
military aircraft. In addition, the Chinese have installed radar systems,
anti-aircraft missiles, and anti-missile defense systems on some of these
islands.
These, then, are the projects that the Trump administration says it will
stop. But China's conduct in the South China Sea leaves little doubt about
its determination to hold onto what it has and continue its activities. The
Chinese leadership has made this clear
<
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-southchinasea-idUSKBN1572M4>
since Donald Trump's election, and the state-run press has struck a
similarly defiant note, drawing crude red lines of its own. For example, the
Global Times, a nationalist newspaper, mocked
<
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1028568.shtml> Trump's pretensions and
issued a doomsday warning: "The U.S. has no absolute power to dominate the
South China Sea. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear strategies if he
wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories."
Were the administration to follow its threatening talk with military action,
the Global Times added ominously, "The two sides had better prepare for a
military clash." Although the Chinese leadership hasn't been anywhere near
as bombastic, top officials have made it clear that they won't yield an inch
on the South China Sea, that disputes over territories are matters for China
and its neighbors to settle, and that Washington had best butt out
<
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-25/china-tells-trump-to-stay-out-of-sout
h-china-sea-dispute/8212246> .
True, as the acolytes of a "unipolar" world remind us, China's military
spending amounts to barely more than a quarter
<
http://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.asp> of
Washington's and U.S. naval and air forces are far more advanced
<
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-f
uture-superpower> and lethal than their Chinese equivalents. However,
although there certainly is a debate about the legal validity and historical
accuracy of China's territorial claims, given the increasingly acrimonious
relationship between Washington and Beijing the more strategically salient
point may be that these territories, thousands of miles from the U.S.
mainland, mean so much more to China than they do to the United States. By
now, they are inextricably bound up with its national identity and pride,
and with powerful historical and nationalistic memories -- with, that is, a
sense that, after nearly two centuries of humiliation at the hands of the
West, China is now a rising global power that can no longer be pushed
around.
Behind such sentiments lies steel. By buying some $30 billion
<
http://www.theasanforum.org/evolution-of-sino-russian-defense-cooperation-s
ince-the-cold-war/> in advanced Russian armaments since the early 1990s and
developing the capacity to build advanced weaponry of its own, China has
methodically acquired the military means, and devised a strategy
<
https://www.usnwc.edu/Lucent/OpenPdf.aspx?id=95> , to inflict serious
losses on the American navy in any clash in the South China Sea, where
geography serves as its ally. Beijing may, in the end, lose a showdown
there, but rest assured that it would exact a heavy price before that. What
sort of "victory" would that be?
If the fighting starts, it will be tough for the presidents of either
country to back down. Xi Jinping, like Trump, presents himself as a tough
guy
<
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/what-west-should-know-about-xi
-jinping-china-s-most-powerful-leader-mao> , sure to trounce his enemies at
home and abroad. Retaining that image requires that he not bend when it
comes to defending China's land and honor. He faces another problem as well.
Nationalism long ago sidelined Maoism in his country. As a result, were he
and his colleagues to appear pusillanimous in the face of a Trumpian
challenge, they would risk losing their legitimacy and potentially bringing
their people onto the streets (something that can happen quickly in the age
of social media). That's a particularly forbidding thought in what is
arguably the most rebellious
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175386/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_are_we_still_
on_an_imperial_planet/> land in the historical record. In such
circumstances, the leadership's abiding conviction that it can calibrate the
public's nationalism to serve the Communist Party's purposes without letting
it get out of hand may prove delusional.
Certainly, the Party understands the danger that runaway nationalism could
pose to its authority. Its paper, the People's Daily, condemned the
"irrational patriotism
<
http://www.economist.com/news/china/21702527-xi-jinping-tries-contain-publi
c-fury-over-south-china-sea-my-nationalism-and-dont-you?zid=306&ah=1b164dbd4
3b0cb27ba0d4c3b12a5e227> " that manifested itself in social media forums and
street protests after the recent international tribunal's verdict favoring
the Philippines. And that's hardly the first time a foreign policy fracas
has excited public passions. Think, for example, of the anti-Japanese
demonstrations that swept the country in 2005, provoked by Japanese school
textbooks that sanitized that country's World War II-era atrocities in
China. Those protests spread to many cities
<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/17/china.japan> , and the
numbers were sizeable with more than 10,000
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58567-2005Apr16.html> angry
demonstrators on the streets of Shanghai alone. At first, the leadership
encouraged the rallies, but it got nervous as things started to spin out of
control.
"We're Going to War in the South China Sea..."
Facing off against China, President Trump could find himself in a similar
predicament, having so emphasized his toughness, his determination to regain
America's lost respect and make the country great again. The bigger problem,
however, will undoubtedly be his own narcissism and his obsession with
winning, not to mention his inability to resist sending incendiary messages
via Twitter. Just try to imagine for a moment how a president who blows his
stack during a getting-to-know-you phone call
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/no-gday-mate-on-call
-with-australian-pm-trump-badgers-and-brags/2017/02/01/88a3bfb0-e8bf-11e6-80
c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html?utm_term=.5c9e3b2e912e#comments> with the prime
minister of Australia, a close ally, is likely to conduct himself in a
confrontation with a country he's labeled a prime adversary.
In the event of a military crisis between China and the United States,
neither side may want an escalation, to say nothing of a nuclear war. Yet
Trump's threats to impose 45%
<
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/15/just-how-badly-could-trumps-threatened-45-ta
riff-hurt-china.html> tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. and his
repeated condemnation of China as a "currency manipulator
<
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-china-currency-20161229-story.h
tml> " and stealer
<
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-china-idUSKBN0OX0T8201
50617> of American jobs have already produced a poisonous atmosphere
between the world's two most powerful countries. And it was made worse by
his December phone conversation
<
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/308559-trump-makes-history
-with-phone-call-to-taiwan-leader> with Taiwan's president, Tsai Ing-wen,
which created doubts
<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/12/donald-trump-questions-us-c
ommitment-to-one-china-policy> about his commitment to the One China policy
the United States has adhered to since 1972. The Chinese authorities
apparently made it clear to the White House that there couldn't even be a
first-time phone call to Xi unless the new president agreed to stick with
that policy. During a conversation with the Chinese president on February
9th, Trump reportedly
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/trump-agrees-to-honor-one
-china-policy-in-call-to-xi-jinping/2017/02/10/ea6e7ece-ef4a-11e6-9973-c5efb
7ccfb0d_story.html?utm_term=.262fa0d658a4> provided that essential
assurance. Given the new American president's volatility, however, Beijing
will be playing close attention to his words and actions, even his symbolic
ones, related to Taiwan.
Sooner or later, if Trump doesn't also dial down the rest of his rhetoric on
China, its leaders will surely ratchet up theirs, thereby aggravating the
situation further. So far, they've restrained themselves in order to figure
Trump out -- not an easy task even for Americans -- and in hopes that his
present way of dealing with the world might be replaced with something more
conventional and recognizable. Hope, as they say, springs eternal, but as of
now, in repeatedly insisting that China must do as he says, Trump and his
surrogates have inserted themselves and the country into a complicated
territorial dispute far from America's shores. The hubris of Washington
acting as the keeper of world order, but regularly breaking the rules as it
wishes, whether by invading Iraq in 2003 or making open use of torture and a
global network of secret prisons, is an aspect of American behavior long
obvious to foreign powers. It looks to be the essence of Trumpism, too, even
if its roots are old indeed.
Don't dismiss the importance of heated exchanges between Washington and
Beijing in the wake of Trump's election. The political atmosphere between
rival powers, especially those with massive arsenals, can matter a great
deal when they face off in a crisis. Pernicious stereotypes and mutual
mistrust only increase the odds that crucial information will be
misinterpreted in the heat of the moment because of entrenched beliefs that
are immune to contrary evidence, misperceptions, worst-case calculations,
and up-the-ante reactions. In academic jargon, these constitute the
ingredients for a classic conflict spiral
<
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737512.001.
0001/acprof-9780199737512-chapter-17> . In such a situation, events take
control of leaders, producing outcomes that none of them sought. Not for
nothing during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 did President John Kennedy
look to <
https://fas.org/pir-pubs/presidents-message-nuclear-guns-august/>
Barbara Tuchman's book, Guns of August -- a gripping account of how Europe
slipped and slid into a disastrous world war in 1914.
There has been lots of anxiety about the malign effects that Donald Trump's
temperament and beliefs could have domestically, and for good reason. But in
domestic politics, institutions and laws, civic organizations, the press,
and public protests can serve, however imperfectly, as countervailing
forces. In international politics, crises can erupt suddenly and unfold
rapidly -- and the checks on rash behavior by American presidents are much
weaker. They have considerable leeway to use military force (having
repeatedly circumvented the War Powers Act). They can manipulate public
opinion from the Bully Pulpit and shape the flow of information. (Think back
to the Iraq war.) Congress typically rallies reflexively around the flag
during international crises. In such moments, citizens' criticism or mass
protest invites charges of disloyalty.
This is why the brewing conflict in the South China Sea and rising
animosities on both sides could produce something resembling a
Cuban-Missile-Crisis-style situation -- with the United States lacking the
geographical advantage this time around. If you think that a war between
China and the United States couldn't possibly happen, you might have a point
in ordinary times, which these distinctly aren't.
Take the latest news on Stephen Bannon, formerly the executive chairman of
the alt-right publication Breitbart News and now President Trump's chief
political strategist. He has even been granted the right to sit in on every
meeting of the National Security Council and its Principals Committee
<
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/the-trump-national-sec
urity-council-an-analysis/514910/> , the highest inter-agency forum for
day-to-day national security deliberations. He will be privy to meetings
that, according to a directive
<
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memoran
dum-organization-national-security-council-and> signed by Trump, even the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national
intelligence may not join unless "issues pertaining to their
responsibilities and expertise will be discussed." Calling this a break with
past practice would be an understatement of the first order.
So Bannon's views, once of interest only to a fringe group of Americans, now
matter greatly. Here's what he said last March about China in a radio
interview <
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdqoUSTgfmA> : "We're going to
war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren't we? There's no doubt
about that. They're taking their sandbars and making basically stationary
aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the
United States in front of our face -- and you understand how important face
is -- and say it's an ancient territorial sea."
Think of this as Bannon's version of apocalyptic prophecy. Then consider the
volatility of the new president he advises. Then focus on the larger
message: these are not ordinary times. Most Americans probably don't even
know that there is a South China Sea. Count on one thing, though: they will
soon.
Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176230/tomgram%3A_rajan_menon,_the_iranian_
connection_in_the_age_of_trump/> regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer
Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of
New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman
Institute of War and Peace Studies. He is the author, most recently, of The
Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199384878/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> .
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter <
https://twitter.com/TomDispatch> and join us
on Facebook <
http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch> . Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467244/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> , as
well as Nick Turse's Next Time They
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608466485/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> 'll Come
to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> .
Copyright 2017 Rajan Menon
C 2017 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176242/
Attachment:
image001.gif
Description: Binary data
Attachment:
image002.jpg
Description: Binary data
Attachment:
image003.png
Description: Binary data
Other related posts:
- » [blind-democracy] Tomgram: Rajan Menon, The China Missile Crisis of 2018? - Miriam Vieni
