Walter Russell Mead congratulates President Obama and his team on the real success of their diplomacy in Asia:
The US acted, received strikingly widespread support, and China backed down.
That is in fact what happened, and it was as decisive a diplomatic victory as anyone is likely to see. Congratulations should go to President Obama and his national security team. The State Department, the Department of Defense and the White House have clearly been working effectively together on an intensive and complex strategy. They avoided leaks, they coordinated effectively with half a dozen countries, they deployed a range of instruments of power. In the field of foreign policy, this was a coming of age of the Obama administration and it was conceived and executed about as flawlessly as these things ever can be.
But – and there’s always a but in diplomacy – one move, even a series of well choreographed and expertly timed moves – does not a match make:
Longer term, the conviction in the (Chinese) military and among hard liners in the civilian establishment that the US is China’s enemy and seeks to block China’s natural rise will not only become more entrenched and more powerful; it will have consequences. Very experienced and well informed foreign diplomats and observers already warn that the military is in many respects becoming independent of political authorities and some believe that like the Japanese military in the 1930s, China’s military or factions within it could begin to take steps on critical issues that the political authorities could not reverse. Islands could be occupied, flags raised and shots fired.
Certainly any Chinese arguments against massive military build ups will be difficult to win. The evident weakness of China’s position will make it impossible to resist calls for more military spending and an acceleration of the development of China’s maritime capacity…
The US has won the first round, but the game has just begun. The Obama administration and its successors will now have to deal with a long term contest against the world’s most populous country and the world’s most rapidly developing economy. The Obama administration may not have fully counted the costs of the new Asian hard line; for one thing, it is hard to see significant cuts coming in defense spending after we have challenged China to a contest over the future of Asia. It’s possible that less drama now might have made America’s point as effectively while reducing the chance of Chinese push back, but there is not a lot of point in debating that now.
Given where things now stand, follow through will be as important as the first steps; the US must now try to make it as easy as possible for China to accept a situation that, in the short to medium term at least, it cannot change.
First comes the political succession, then the internal struggle for power and the coalescence of a national strategy. That is, of course, if the Peoples’ Liberation Army has the patience for it.
In the really long term, we’re all dead. The state within a state represented by the PLA gets to ponder its over-reaching, rebuke and subsequent loss of face and decide how long “long” is.
PS: For US diplomats, it’s all pats on the back, champagne toasts and Washington fêtes, for now. A chance to celebrate a coup. An opportunity, even, to treasure an adversary worth tilting against, after a decade of squashing irrational bugs, and making uncomfortable alliances.
Let’s hope we haven’t forgotten how to play this game.
“…follow through will be as important as first steps…”
Although I generally like Meads’ take on things, I view these events rather/somewhat differently. Most of the actions described were unilateral actions taken by the nations involved as much as a response to America’s weakness and inaction as anything else. And Obama is writing a military check he knows–given our debt/budget problems–that he can’t cash–a check neither he nor his party philosophically want to cash. It seems to me Obama is betting/hoping that, with a minimal of outward display of attentiveness (and attendant cost outlays) to the military challenges in the region, and with some adroit arm-twisting, the rest of the region can be prodded into taking up the military slack on their own hook, having seen it’s in their own vital interests to do so. And while there is much soundness to that strategy tactically in the short-run and all to the good that our Pacific allies are made to realize that they must carry their own weight, this is a strategy based on weakness, not wisdom.
We have always shouldered the burdens of providing both conventional military heft and the “nuclear umbrella” in the Western Pacific precisely because both we and the other nation’s in the region feared a nuclear-armed and independent-acting Japan. Because of our financial situation our long-term ability to fund the requisite power projection in that part of the world sufficient to keep the PRC in check is now seriously in doubt. China is near to all the rest and we are far. Do we really want a region armed to the teeth? And a nuclear Japan? Because if Japan goes nuclear Thailand will not be far behind. And then Vietnam–far-fetched as it seems today? Then neither we nor the PRC will be in control of the region’s destiny.
Things will be different–I’m just not so sanguine as is Mead.
PS: I guess one could say this is but another example of Obama’s “leading-from-behind” technique/predilection.
At least the president has been consistent; Obama seems to be leading even his ‘Green revolution’ from the posterior.
The issues with China will be handled by the next President, in 2013. This will not be Obama’s crew but whoever the GOP presents. The Vacationer-in -Chief will get a ticket for Chi-town.
Her Hillary-ness maybe asked to stick around….her efforts are recognized and she has carved a nice niche for herself ……time will tell.
I worry that the same scenario of Japan in the 1930s in quickly becoming likely. The PLA is becoming more and more of a nuclear-armed corporation and that doesn’t bode well for a peaceful future. There will be a flashpoint. I just hope either we have enough of a military left after these grievous budget cuts or our allies can pick up the slack.
Reading about Guadacanal, I’m mortified we might have to fight the same kind of brutal naval battles we did in Ironbottom Sound.
Before we pat ourselves on the back too much, we need to remember that this outcome has as much to do with a blowback against a heavy-handed China as it does with deft US diplomacy. We tend to forget that Viet Nam fought a war against the Chinese AFTER they fought the US, a war in which the PLA was badly embarrassed.
PLA interests are obtuse and complex. Analogies to pre-war Japan are unlikely to be helpful in understanding their motives or interests. China has and will continue to have commercial access to materials, unlike pre-war Japan. It is more a question of the division of profits.
The big issues for China in the coming decades will be internal issues – a growing division of wealth and a big shift away from the export economy which has gotten them to where they are. Costs are rising while a majority of the population is still poor.
The PLA may be most dangerous if in fact the internal conditions of the country begin to deteriorate, and an external crisis becomes expedient. That scenario seems unlikely any time soon.
flat, that the domestic Chinese conditions will deteriorate is pretty much a given. They are in as much of a debt driven bubble as we are (one Chinese commentator estimates the regime is in debt to the tune of $36 trillion). Their economy is a hollow shell that will likely implode in the near future.
While China has domestic sources for many of the materials she needs, Oil she is quite short of and that’s one reason for her ties with the Paks. She is moving towards the Persian Gulf. The Spartlys move is of a piece with that too.
Frankly, I wonder at what will happen when things come crashing down around our ears and we have to pull in our horns because we don’t have the money to defend our interests anymore.
Dang, it’s like a Keith Laumer novel, complete with Ambassador Sternwheeler, First Secretary Hidebinder, etc.
Retief to the Rescue! If only…
Now you can see why Captain Laumer soothed his mind by building and flying model airplanes. There is nothing which will mellow you out more than that. I have drawings of about a dozen of his designs saved to my hard drive. I would like to talk to his daughter about the capstrip issue. It seems that the way he did that would make wrinkles in the fabric on the wings.
what grisstled coastie said. once upon a time there was a country named Japan with a controlling military voice and a need for resources…but back then we built our own stuff.