But China might have overplayed its hand and forced the Asia-Pacific region into closer cooperation. The result is the emergence of a region-wide hedge against Beijing that could deter China, circumscribing its power and keeping the Pacific relatively peaceful. It all hinges on America’s military muscle and political resolve.
A rising power
Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria argues many observers are guilty of “wildly exaggerating China’s capabilities” and points out Beijing “is still spending a fraction of what America does, at most 10 percent of the Pentagon’s annual bill.”
But there is an emerging sense that friction among various Pacific powers is inevitable. As military author, scholar, and Defense Policy Board member Robert Kaplan said in the 2005 article “How We Would Fight China” for The Atlantic, “The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacific” and could trigger “a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a center of gravity not in the heart of Europe but, rather, among Pacific atolls.”
Just consider Beijing’s military buildup.
According to a Pentagon report on the Chinese military, Beijing increased military spending by 12.7 percent in 2011, resuming 10 years of double-digit increases. (The year 2010 was an anomaly because of the global recession.)
With those resources, Beijing is deploying aerospace, cyberspace, and naval capabilities “to deter or counter third-party intervention, including by the United States,” according to the Pentagon. Among China’s growing arsenal of “anti-access and area-denial weapons” are carrier-killing missiles with a range exceeding 1,500 km, upgraded bombers armed with new long-range cruise missiles, 75 surface combatants, more than 60 submarines, and emerging stealth and aircraft-carrier capabilities.
“China increasingly will be able to project power in East Asia and therefore interfere with U.S. freedom of access to the region,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (ESRC).
That’s no small matter, given the U.S. has dominated the Pacific since World War II. Beijing is trying to loosen that hold. Adm. Mike Mullen, USN-Ret., has said China’s new weapons systems “seem very focused on the United States Navy and our bases that are in that part of the world.”
Indeed, it appears China’s goal is to nudge the U.S. out of the Asia-Pacific region or, short of that, dissuade the U.S. from getting involved in areas of interest to China.
That brings us to China’s newfound assertiveness. The Pentagon notes “China’s broad claim to potentially all of the South China Sea remains a source of regional contention.”
• For instance, Beijing recently claimed territories within 50 miles of the Philippines. China has built permanent platforms in Philippine waters. And Chinese frigates intruded six times into Philippine waters in 2011, firing on fishing boats in some cases.
• Chinese ships have rammed Vietnamese ships and violated Vietnamese territorial waters, prompting Vietnam to ram Chinese ships and conduct live-fire naval drills.
• The Chinese navy ordered an Indian warship operating in international waters off Vietnam to explain its presence in “Chinese waters.”
• After the first violation of Taiwanese airspace by China since 1999, Taiwan scrambled fighters in July 2011 to intercept Chinese warplanes.
Beijing expects others to observe its EEZ as sovereign Chinese territory, even though it refuses to respect the EEZs of other nations.
• China has made outlandish claims on the waters near Japan. Chinese vessels violated Japanese waters 14 times from late 2010 through late 2011. Ten Chinese warships sailed into waters near Okinawa in 2010. Chinese aircraft encroached on Japanese airspace 83 times in the first half of 2011, forcing Tokyo to scramble interceptors.
• In 2009, there were six incidents involving U.S. and Chinese vessels.
• Simmering beneath all of these new tensions is the Cold War legacy problem of North Korea, made all-the-more perilous by Kim Jong-Il’s death. But that’s a subject for another article.
Regional response
Answering Beijing’s aggressive behavior, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in 2010 “the United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea.”
Clinton’s comments incensed China, but they were welcomed elsewhere in the Pacific, largely because China’s neighbors are threatened by China’s behavior. As a consequence, they are making heavy investments in military hardware.
52 MILITARY OFFICER APRIL 2012
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