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Don't pencil in that war with China for 2014
At the end of 2011, in an article on this site titled "Maybe that war with China isn't so far off after all", I drew that gloomy conclusion because the United States, thanks to the justifications, excuses, and pretexts surrounding its desire to "pivot to Asia", had created the doctrinal and public relations justification and institutional incentives for military hostilities with the PRC. The slowly developing pivot has certainly created problems for the People's Republic in 2013, energizing its antagonists, marginalizing its supporters, and turning China's search for advantage in its East Asian environment into a grinding, costly slog, marked by incessant friction between Japan and China, the escalating defiance of the Philippines, and the alarming emergence of India as Japan's explicit security partner. Despite talk of a "new model" of US-China relations, the new regime of Xi Jinping has not hit many of the conciliatory marks that the United States pointedly set for it (and, in the case of Syria, its resistance to the Obama administration's policies have been rather clearly vindicated). In East Asia, China continues to claim objectionable security prerogatives, particularly in its maritime zone. Western elite opinion is set against the country as an assertive, uncooperative, and disturbing force - witness the media uproar against the PRC for failing to supply the level of typhoon aid to the Philippines that might validate China's legitimacy as a benign regional power, at least in the eyes of the West - and the outlook for 2014 is more complaints and more coercion. Increasingly, this attitude manifests itself as the assertion in the Western public sphere that US relations with the PRC are veering from the model of peaceful competition to an existential good versus evil cage match. This is demonstrably not the opinion in PRC pundit-land, nor does it seem to be the case when considering the actual application of US pivot policy. In fact, a closer reading of the events of 2013 imply that there are more pressing and productive priorities for the US in Asia than teeing up World War III.
Posted by: Pappy 2014-01-02 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=382829 |