The United States is working hard to recalibrate its national security strategy with an Asia-Pacific focus. If China can act boldly, it has multiple avenues for countering it.
For the past several months, the United States has been busy promoting its “pivot” toward the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions. Free from conflict in Iraq, and with the winding down of its involvement in Afghanistan apparently accelerating, the U.S. now has more freedom to focus its strategic muscle on this dynamic part of the world. Through pronouncements in the press, and with some carefully crafted diplomatic and strategic jockeying, the United States is gradually reasserting itself in the region.
Such a shift is no surprise to anyone who has been following recent geopolitical events. Militarily, the United States made its intentions clear in the 2007 Maritime Strategy report under the George W. Bush administration. While still engaged in two wars in the Middle East, U.S security planners were still crafting a change of strategy well before the withdrawal of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan had been finalized.
In March 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all but declared that a new game was afoot. “We are in a competition for influence with China,” she told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Let’s put aside the humanitarian, do-good side of what we believe in. Let's just talk straight realpolitik. We are in competition with China.”
Such a shift makes sense for a number of reasons. The Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions are home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies. With America’s precarious economic position, gaining access to such markets offers the prospect of more American jobs and a boost to a still sluggish economy.
But it’s hard to escape the reality that China is the key reason for the U.S. refocusing. With the United States having spent the better part of the last decade fighting conflicts in the Middle East, China has meanwhile gone to great lengths to enhance its strategic position in East Asia. Beijing has steadily increased its armed forces budget over the last decade. With its advances in anti-access weapons and asymmetrical arms, U.S. forces are, according to one scholar, “On the wrong side of physics.” While U.S. military forces outgun their Chinese rivals, recent studies suggest China’s military budget will double by 2015, meaning a China-centric strategy makes sense.
Still, it’s important not to overstate the speed with which the U.S. pivot – and the associated China concerns – have taken place. The fact is that U.S. -China tensions aren’t exactly new. Indeed, seemingly lost in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks is the fact that the United States and China faced off in the Taiwan Strait in 1996 and in 2001 over an aircraft collision near Hainan Island. In The Diplomat last May, Frank Ching correctly pointed out, “Bush himself had already repudiated the Clinton administration’s policy of forging a strategic partnership with China, calling Beijing a strategic competitor, rather than a strategic partner.” Several days after the return of its EP-3 surveillance crew, the U.S. offered Taiwan a massive arms package. With tensions brewing “shifts in attitudes in both nations seem to be pointing to a showdown.”
Photo Credit: Chinese Foreign Ministry
View as Single Page
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
A.J.Majumdar
China will definitely not take the advice, doled out gratuitously in this essay, about being friendly with the neighbours. With the growing domestic resentment of venality and corruption,Beijing will definitely choose warfare with the neighbours, perhaps low-intensity warfare. Further China is motivated by two major aspirations of Hitler. 1. lebensraum: the Hans breeding copiously, will not be satisfied with Xinjiang, Mongolia and Tibet; they are eyeing Vietnam and Arunachal Pradesh. . anschluss; having spread out in all directions, they will demand that the areas where Chines have settled in substantial numbers should be joined with China. It's time to take note.
Tofu Dynasty
How many people here have actually been to China? In Shanghai China’s premier city, Chinese urban dwellers hang their clothes out to dry like the Favelas in Brazil. China is not even at Mexico’s level of GDP per capita and the Red Guards in here are already crowning China as a developed superpower! It makes me laugh but they do look and sound ridiculous when the reality of China makes a mockery out of their claim. Maybe when I see less clothes drying outside in Shanghai then I would believe China is progressing. :))
Cyrus
John how many Chinese products have been recalled in recent memory because it has chemicals not safe for human consumption?
Tofu Dynasty
Wow, more Red Guards are crowing about predictions and forecasting of China’s future economic progress from some obscure Think Thank I see!!! It seems like wishful thinking is the only thing the descendants of Mao can use as proof of China’s economic superiority built on sweat shop labor and investment from Overseas Chinese. The future is very hard to predict. Who would have predicted the internet, iphone, ipad, Microsoft ect. By the way did any of those things came from China? LOL Keep dreaming little Red Guards. Your government can’t even convince your own people and much less ethnic minorities like Uighurs and Tibetans that China is stable and prosperous.
Like I said fifty years from the US will remain a stable prosperous democracy while Communist China will become what?????? I think the chances of China imploding is more valid and more believable than wishful thinking.
Remember making Christmas lights and value meal toys does not mean economic superiority or superpower status! :) I love how unrealistic these Chinese dreamers are.
eyedrd
Chinese Navy Hegemony Continues to Bully Unarmed Fishing Boats: Are the acts of Pirates or of a Navy?
Let’s take a look at a situation where a navy ship heavily equipped with guns and missiles saw small fishing boats,unarmed, wandering into the water that the navy ship was guarding.
What would that navy ship should act or behave toward those small fishing ships looking for shelter due to the big wind? In a civilized maritime law, the navy ship should have come into the rescue of the small ships in danger and then direct those ships out of their turf.
Instead, this navy ship shot at unarmed fishermen and beat them up and confiscated all of the catches, worth of $25,000. Is it a normal conduct of a navy? or the behavior of the navy ship was just like any pirates using force to brutalize unarmed people and rob their catches.
SCdad07
Now that World Bank released its report on China. I await the fireworks to follow.
“If China does not follow the …paths….COLLAPSE….. yet, before 2030, China will exceed US as the largest economy…”.
I smell Opium: Page 16 on report recommends free market approach so : “allowing interest rates to be set by market forces”.
Bernanke and Legarde – are you listening.