Comparisons between East Asia and 1930s Europe aren’t uncommon. So, is the Obama administration really appeasing China?
I’ve been an admirer of Sen. James Webb of Virginia since the late 1980s, when I was a newly commissioned US Navy officer and he served as secretary of the navy. Alongside his accomplishments as a policymaker and a lawmaker, Webb is a decorated US Marine veteran of Vietnam, a novelist and historian of considerable note, and a fellow descendant of Scots-Irish immigrants who helped settle the American South. What’s not to like? So when the senator opines that the United States is ‘approaching a Munich moment with China’ in the South China Sea, it’s worth taking his words seriously.
He levels an incendiary charge. If this is a Munich moment in the making, who are the protagonists? Webb seemingly casts China in the part of Nazi Germany, an aggressive, acquisitive power bent on increasing its geopolitical sway at small states’ expense. This makes President Hu Jintao the counterpart to German dictator Adolf Hitler. President Barack Obama plays the part of Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who traded away much of Czechoslovakia in 1938 in the hope of slaking Hitler’s land hunger. Chamberlain returned home to riotous applause, proclaiming that the West had negotiated ‘peace in our time.’ British and French statesmen were also playing for time in case peace proved evanescent. By granting Hitler’s demands for ethnically German territories, they gained a respite to rebuild their armed forces for the coming European war. Southeast Asian countries are helpless Czechoslovakia, unable to prevent great powers from bartering away its vital interests—ultimately even its national existence. Webb’s casting choices can please none of the players in the unfolding South China Sea drama.
‘Munich’ is shorthand for ‘appeasement,’ a concept that took on malodorous connotations following 1938. It’s worth pointing out, however, that appeasement is routine diplomatic intercourse in normal times. Countries compromise all the time, as they should. Is Munich—whose infamy connotes give-and-take with predators—an apt metaphor for US conduct vis-à-vis the maritime disputes roiling the South China Sea?
Let’s deconstruct the analogy to develop some parameters for thinking about Southeast Asian events. First, Czechoslovakia was a secondary object for the appeasers. The threat to peace arose, in Chamberlain’s words, from ‘a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.’ Fighting for Czechoslovakia verged on unthinkable for Britain and France. Americans seldom follow Southeast Asian politics, despite the importance of this maritime crossroads to US and global commerce. Filipino leaders maintain that the 1951 security treaty between Manila and Washington covers maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea. Would Americans fight to defend such claims, or are they, like Czech sovereignty for the Western powers in 1938, a secondary affair?
Second, the Anglo-French delegates offered a land-hungry aggressor this secondary object to purchase temporary peace. Hitler had started amassing a track record for aggression. In 1936, for example, German troops remilitarized the Rhineland. Berlin thereby started undoing the Versailles Treaty, the accord that terminated World War I, while imposing burdensome provisions on defeated Germany. In early 1938, Hitler pressured Austria into accepting an Anschluss, or union in a greater German empire. At Munich, then, French and British leaders offered concessions that whetted a predator’s appetite for further territory. Having traded away the Sudetenland, the largely German-speaking industrial district of Czechoslovakia—and home to mountains shielding the republic from invasion—London and Paris nullified Prague’s ability to resist German demands. German forces occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia soon after.
Photo Credit: Uniphoto Press
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ari
Hmm … another American piece preparing and softening Americans and the world for Washngton’s attack on China in the near future. So obvious. So here’s my viewpoint from an overseas Chinese perspective which I wrote in response to another recent article in the Diplomat :
“China is “too assertive”, “made bellicose statements”, “volatile military expanson” …
obviously another spin job give China an unfavourable image as an agressive nation which is nothing further from the truth.
All these smear campaign is but a build up to a justification to attack China in the near future before it becomes too powerful. The tipping point is 2020 – a point in time which Washington feels China’s economic and military prowess may be on par with America’s. Beyond that, America’s economy and military may become increasingly over-shadowed. Thus, the current point in time to 2020 affords Washinton the only window of opportunity to either (i) subjugate China into a colony, or (ii) attack China and render her impotent economically and militarily.
Hence Washington’s evident all-out war to demonize, slander, and smear China through NGOs and sockpuppets and trolls recruited and funded by the Pentagon and the CIA. Not to mention using its “friendly” and allied mass medias to enhance its smear campaign by using every news opportunity to besmirch China. At the same time, it is also roping in “foreign aided” despots in “democratic” countries to use their special branches to similar conduct psychological warfare using similar trolls and sockpuppets to misinform, disinform, distort, lie, and slanders on the internet to manipulate public opinion. And concomittantly encouraging these despotic politicians to make full use of political opportunities to humilate and China and Chinese. Which explains why the corrupted tin-pot generals in some small Far Eastern Asian nations are so “brave” in conducting murder, racial slurs, and territorial violations. Of course, Washington’s coterie of CIA agents ensconced in its embassies are daily traversing the countries to plan, recruit, and carry out subversive activities.
Washington’s declared aim to “shape” China is basically a call to render China its colony and its Chinese workforce into becoming cheap American workforce. Much like Japan’s and S Korea’s. Washington seeks to create incidents which will give it an excuse and pretext to march up to Beijing and install “advisors” there while setting up military bases in China – much like the situation in Japan, and now increasingly so, South Korea. Once that is done, Washington’s pacification of East Asia is complete. China, South Korea and Japan will become the biggest source of revenue to America which can only increase the wealth of its 1% while the rest of East Asia, save for its corrupt qusilings, compradors, and collaborators, become incresingly poor.
With East Asia, principally China in its pocket, Russia is no more a threat and can be dealt with easily although it similarly, needs to be contained now. The world will then bow and kow-tow before the might and power of imperial Washington. Earth becomes Washington’s empire, and Pax Americana truly becomes global.
Liang1a has pointed out the danger of this in an albeit different manner, that is from China’s internal perpspective and need to move its economy from dependency on America’s and America’s allied world’s economy, which is correct and an appropriate response to Washington’s strategy against Beijing and China. But is Beijing aware of this? Or are they continuing to be “ball-less” “eunuchs” of dynasties gone by which saw them undermining Chinas’s military thus allowing smallish puny tribes like the Mongols to conquer China? They really need to be smarter and quicker in their responses. They rally need someone like Lee Kuan Yew who is at once smart and articulate and combative and understands the American mindset. Washington is a real and present danger, a very grave and urgent danger. Does Beijing realize that?
James Colbert hit job here is just part of Washington’s overall campaign against China.”
bhupinder
if we study whole history of world is very mystique,,world is always divided in two power,unfortunately,,now unipolar,,for geting more tax,creating fear among people,america govt need some thing to show,so they need enmy ,so chine can be another nation to create scare in among its citizen,the future world is very mysterious,what hold in future is very sensitive and full of mystery,,whoever is going toplay game ,chine is biggest powerful toplay games,,not so aggresively like german,did,,under hitler,in different circumstances,,now big massive weapon of destructive power,few dare to go out of diplomatic way, even usa will like to think 100 time before attacting anyone, afganistan,irak is failure advanture,
Bogdan from Australia
What a ridiculous rant by RWu.
Has America murdered, starved, tortured to death, forced to commit suicide 70 million of her own citizens?
Has America degraded bilions of her citizens to a robotic slave status with their names replaced by numbers?
Has America commited muss burrials of alive political prisoners?
America has sacrificed 1,5 million of her citizens for the freedom of ohther people.
Tell us you wizard, how many people has China sacrifrced for the freedoms of others?
Appart from that, whay Chi-Coms should be friendlier towards the hand that is feeding them?
Isn’t it a reasnoable expectation from the Yanks to have China more cooperative after having transfered to the yellow commies 10 thrilion dollars, 40 milion jobs and her best technologies?
What about a basic idea of a GRATITUDE?
Why hasn’t China supported America in her attempts to solve the problems of Iraq, Iran and other regimes diplomatically? If they have given that support no war in Iraq, Afganistan or even any looming war wih Iran would be necessary.
You understanding of the international relations in their historical dimension surely resembles the intellectual quotient of the flat Earth believer.
Sinodefender
So what is your excuse for the West enslaving and committing mass genocide on natives? Robotic slave status, now your just ignorant, last time I talked to my cousin in China he didn’t try to brainwash me with Communist propaganda… Yes, what shoving down “democracy down people’s throat” people want to kick you out in the Middle East… Not my problem if companies can make more money by having lower labor costs. I’m Asian and I don’t look yellow at all please keep racism out of comments…
RWu
Bogdan,
Both China and the US did same amount of terrible things. How do we know that? Just look at the size of China and the US on a map, they are the same size.
People don’t easily give up their homes and nations (tribes) don’t easily give up their territories. And if you look at all the mega-countries- Russia, Canada, China, the US, Brazil, and Australia, they all did some terrible things for them to get to that size. Yes even your country Australia- you and your family probably moved to Australia from Eastern Europe not too long ago so your ancestors might not have anything to do with it, but you and I are still part of it because we are enjoying the fruits of these horrible acts committed in the past.
Nevertheless, if you read my previous post carefully, I said “no one can legitimately argue that the world is not a much better place overall because of the US”. The key word is “overall”. Overall I think the US did much more goods than bads. One of the most important things the US did was the establishment of a global capitalist free trade system, and China (not the UK, not Japan, not Australia) is America’s chief sidekick in not only the establishment, but also the maintenance of the system.
After Vietnam war it looked like Democracies will fall like dominoes in Asia and the situation in Europe looked just as bad for the Western camp. And then Nixon came up with a brilliant idea… All the sudden the Soviet Union had to place 40% of its total troop strength along the Chinese border, which left only 30% for the entire European front… the combined Chinese/ NATO encirclement eventually caused the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.
Of course China received tons of Western investments, technologies, and WTO membership as reward, but these are not gifts, China earned them and paid a heavy price- border clashes with Vietnam, North Korea, and the Soviet Union. After the Cold War ended China supported many former Eastern camp countries to join the US led system (but for some strange reason the US is still blocking Russia’s WTO membership) which further strengthened the system.
These days China is doing a lot behind the scene to help the US. For example, China publicly showed off J-20 during Robert Gates’ visit, why? So that Japan, South Korea, and Australia would not cancel their F-35 Joint Strike Fighter purchase. China all the sudden ramps up the rhetoric in SCS, why? Because the US wants to “return to Asia” (code name for selling more weapons to Asian countries). And a while ago Japanese PM Hatoyama was very friendly towards China but China gave him cold shoulder and became more aggressive in ECS, why? Because Hatoyama wanted to kick American troops out of Japan.
China also tries to maintain ties with all the “rogue states” even though most Chinese citizens detest those countries just as much as Western citizens, why? Because the moment China cuts tie with any one of these countries, that country becomes a failed state. Just look at Libya, the moment Chinese airforce and navy evacuated Chinese citizens, NATO bombs starts falling.
Collectively these rogue states’ trade volume with China is minuscule and it generates very bad PR for China, but China has to keep engaging them because the world already has more failed states than the US/ NATO can handle.